THE  VERY   ELECT 


THE    VERY    ELECT 

BACCALAUREATE  SERMONS 

AND 

OCCASIONAL  ADDRESSES 

» 

OF 

MATTHEW  HENRY  BUCKHAM,  D.D.  LL.D. 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  VERMONT 
1871-1910 

With  Biographical  Notes  and 
Studies  in  Appreciation 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 

BOSTON         NEW  YORK         CHICAGO 


r    ( 


Copyright,  1912 
By  LUTHER  H.   GARY 


THE     RUMFORD    PRESS 
CONCORD  -  N  •  H  .  U  •  S  •  A 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD vii 

OUTLINE  OP  PRESIDENT  BUCKHAM'S  LIFE 1 

A  MASTERPIECE  IN  LIVING         5 

AN  APPRECIATION 12 

IDEALS  AND  AIMS 18 

ADDRESSES  AND  LECTURES 

THE  VERT  ELECT:  AN  ADDRESS  OP  WELCOME,  SEPT.,  1907  ...      33 
COLLEGE  IDEALS  IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE 44 

Address  at  Vassar  College  on  Founder's  Day,  1891. 

ART,  A  LECTURE 57 

CHRISTIANITY  A  WORLD-WIDE  MOVEMENT 74 

Address  at  the  Triennial  Congregational  Council  in  Portland,  Me., 
October,  1901. 

THE  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES 87 

THE  SCHOOLMASTERS'  SELF-ESTIMATE 103 

Address  to  the  Vermont  Schoolmasters'  Club,  March,  1909. 
THE  DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION 112 

Read  before  the  Faculty  Club,  1910. 

THE  ART  OF  LIVING   TOGETHER:  A  VESPER   HOMILY     ....     121 
THE  LOVE    OF  DIFFICULTY:  AN  ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME,  SEPT., 

1908 132 

SCHOLARLY     ACCOMPLISHMENTS    IN    EVERY-DAY    LIFE:     OPENING 

ADDRESS,  SEPT.,  1909 144 

THE  CLASSICS  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY:  REMARKS  AT  THE  BANQUET  OF 

THE  ALUMNI  ASSOCIATION  OF  NEW  YORK  CITY,  FEB.,  1910.        156 
"ON  MIGHTY  PENS"  (THE  CREATION) 160 


263674 


BACCALAUREATE  SERMONS 

PAGE 

1873.    THE  HEAVENLY  VISION 167 

1880.    THE  SPIRIT  OP  POWER 179 

1886.    THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST ..196 

1889.    GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD 209 

1891.  CHRISTIANITY  AND  SOCIAL  REFORM 222 

1892.  THE  RELIGIOUS  ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE 239 

1894.    SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP 252 

1896.  THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER    .     .     .     .     .     .  266 

1897.  THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF 277 

1898.  WHO  WILL  SHOW  us  ANY  GOOD 288 

1900.    LEADERS  OF  MEN 299 

1906.  THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE 307 

1907.  NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL 319 

1908.  THE  SIMPLE  LIFE 332 

1909.  FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES 343 

1910.  THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD 354 

TRUE  CHRISTIAN  UNITY  .  365 


FOREWORD 

IT  HAS  not  been  thought  best  to  attempt  a  formal  biography 
in  connection  with  this  volume.  It  aims  to  present  a  repre- 
sentative collection  of  President  Buckham's  writings  prefaced 
by  an  outline  of  his  lifework  and  a  few  appreciations.  The 
task  of  selecting  the  papers,  addresses  and  sermons  to  be 
included  has  been  a  difficult  one  because  of  the  abundance 
and  variety  of  the  material.  No  doubt  many  a  reader  will 
miss  some  address  or  sermon  that  he  recalls  with  especial 
interest  and  would  like  to  have  found  here,  but  the  necessity 
of  condensation  has  put  limitations  upon  the  compilers.  The 
aim  has  been  not  so  much  at  inclusiveness  on  the  one  hand 
or  at  unity  on  the  other,  as  to  secure  an  adequate  expression 
of  the  convictions  and  the  ideals  of  the  man  whose  mind  the 
volume  seeks  to  reflect. 

It  is  our  hope  that  the  volume  will  prove  to  be  a  trust- 
worthy, though  insufficient,  memorial  of  the  author,  and  at 
the  same  time  an  offering  of  permanent  worth  to  the  Univer- 
sity which  he  so  long  and  so  devotedly  loved  and  served. 

JOHN  W.  BUCKHAM, 
J.  E.  GOODRICH. 


OUTLINE    OF  PRESIDENT  BUCKHAM'S  LIFE 

MATTHEW  HENRY  BUCKHAM  came  from  England  with 
his  parents  when  but  an  infant.  His  destiny  seems  to 
have  been  foreshadowed  in  his  birth,  which  occurred  on  the 
fourth  of  July,  1832.  His  father  was  an  Independent,  or 
Congregational  minister,  who  sometimes  added  to  his  small 
stipend  and  his  practical  usefulness  by  conducting  a  private 
school.  Matthew  entered  college  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  with 
an  admirable  grounding,  received  from  his  father,  in  all  the 
subjects  which  a  freshman  should  know.  At  the  age  of 
nineteen  he  took  his  first  degree,  winning  the  highest  honors 
of  a  class  many  of  whom  were  five  to  eight  years  his  seniors. 

For  two  years  he  was  headmaster  of  the  old  academy  at 
Lenox,  Mass.;  then  tutor  in  languages  for  a  year  at  Burlington. 
Two  years  were  next  given  to  study  and  research  abroad, 
chiefly  at  University  College,  London.  Upon  his  return  (in 
1856)  he  accepted  a  temporary  position  on  the  teaching  staff 
of  the  University  of  Vermont  as  professor  of  English  Liter- 
ature, and  the  year  following  was  made  professor  of  Greek. 
In  1863  he  took  up  again  the  duties  of  the  chair  of  Rhetoric 
and  English  Literature,  and  continued  in  charge  of  both 
departments  till  1871,  when  President  Angell's  resignation 
opened  the  way  for  his  promotion  to  the  presidency.  At 
his  death,  29  November,  1910,  he  had  already  well  begun  his 
fortieth  year  of  oversight  and  direction,  and  was  accounted 
the  Dean  of  American  college  presidents. 

As  an  instructor  Professor  Buckham  was  admirably 
equipped  for  his  work.  His  scholarship  was  accurate,  his 
memory  held  fast  whatever  his  wide  reading  had  gathered. 
His  taste  in  English  Literature  and  his  skill  in  the  use  of  his 
mother  tongue  made  his  example  in  the  lecture  room  of  even 
more  value  than  his  formal  precepts  and  criticism, 
i  1 


THE  VERY  ELECT 


President  AngelPs  administration  of  five  years  had  shown 
that  he  had  in  full  measure  the  qualities  demanded  by  the 
position.  He  was,  in  one  sense,  a  hard  man  to  follow,  though 
he  had  done  much  to  clear  the  way  and  lay  a  foundation  for 
his  successor  to  build  upon.  Professor  Buckham  had  admi- 
rably discharged  the  duties  of  the  class  room;  his  ability  to 
manage  and  direct,  to  win  support  and  conciliate  opposition, 
had  yet  to  be  proved.  There  were  those  who  withheld  a 
hearty  co-operation,  waiting  to  see  what  the  new  executive 
could  do.  The  Agricultural  College  had  not  yet  gained  the 
support  of  all  the  farmers  of  the  State,  and  schemes  for  sever- 
ing the  college  from  the  University  and  planting  it  elsewhere 
had  still  to  be  debated  and  fought  to  a  finish  in  the  Legislature. 
In  this  struggle  for  the  control  and  use  of  the  agricultural 
fund,  and  the  final  settlement  of  the  question  of  location, 
President  Buckham  bore  his  share,  and  not  without  credit. 
This  uneasy  controversy  did  not  favor  the  healthy  growth 
of  either  the  University  or  the  Agricultural  College.  It  took 
a  dozen  years  of  persistent  effort  to  raise  the  roll  of  under- 
graduates (medical  class  not  here  counted)  above  a  round 
hundred.  By  this  time,  however,  opposition  had  mostly 
ceased,  and  the  constituency  of  the  University  had  gained 
confidence  in  the  wisdom  of  their  chief  and  the  practicability 
of  his  plans. 

So  in  1883  began  what  may  be  called  the  "building  era" 
of  the  institution.  Friends  came  forward  with  the  means 
to  give  effect  to  the  President's  plans  for  growth  and  improved 
equipment.  In  1883  came  the  reconstruction  of  the  Old 
College  building;  in  1884  a  more  commodious  housing  for 
the  Medical  department.  In  1885  the  Billings  Library  was 
completed — for  many  years  the  finest  library  edifice  possessed 
by  any  college  in  America.  Then  came  in  1890  three  resi- 
dences for  professors;  in  1892  the  group  of  Farm  buildings; 
in  1895  the  Converse  Dormitory  and  the  Williams  Science 
Hall,  two  substantial  structures  generously  equipped,  to  be 


PRESIDENT  BUCKRAM'S  LIFE  3 

followed  soon  by  a  gymnasium,  a  spacious  fireproof  Medical 
hall,  and  last  of  all,  the  handsome  structure  erected  by  the 
State  in  honor  of  Senator  Justin  S.  Morrill,  worthy  home  of 
the  Farmers'  College. 

All  this  proves  that  President  Buckham  had  found  friends, 
and  that  these  friends  had  satisfied  themselves  of  the  compe- 
tence of  his  management,  and  of  the  sagacity  of  his  plans  for 
future  growth. 

The  President's  House  is  the  only  building  in  the  college 
domain  which  remains  as  it  was  in  1882.  This  domain  itself 
has  been  greatly  extended  and  a  corresponding  progress  is 
to  be  noted  in  new  departments  and  courses  of  instruction, 
in  a  larger  teaching  staff,  and  a  more  adequate  equipment 
in  lecture  halls  and  laboratories.  If  one  compare  the  last 
thirty  years  with  the  previous  history  of  the  University, 
he  will  discover  that  greater  advances  have  been  made,  and 
at  more  points,  than  ever  before.  Mr.  Buckham's  work 
has  been  quietly  accomplished;  the  actual  results  are  his 
monument. 

Mr.  Buckham  was  well  known  through  Vermont  and  New 
England  as  lecturer  and  preacher.  His  addresses  on  educa- 
tional subjects  were  always  heard  with  the  attention  com- 
manded by  ripe  thought  and  long  experience.  As  preacher, 
his  services  were  in  frequent  request,  particularly  on  special 
occasions.  His  characterizations  of  the  lives  and  labors  of 
notable  men,  presented  at  a  funeral  service,  or  in  memoriam, 
were  always  models  of  restrained  speech,  never  lapsing  into 
fulsome  eulogy. 

Twice  was  conferred  on  him  the  distinction  of  Doctor  of 
Divinity,  although  he  was  never  ordained.  He  chose  always 
to  retain  the  status  of  " licentiate"  which  had  been  granted 
him  as  early  as  1857.  He  no  doubt  thought  he  would  be 
freer  to  speak  his  mind  on  all  questions  of  religion  and  theology 
in  case  he  occupied  a  quasi-laical  position.  His  paper  on 
"Lay  Theology"  (1884)  sufficiently  indicates  his  sympathy 


4  THE  VERY  ELECT 

with  the  rank  and  file  of  the  church.  A  " doctor  in  theology" 
he  would  not  have  called  himself,  and  had  he  been  obliged 
to  define  the  word  " divinity"  involved  in  the  " semi-lunar 
fardels,"  he  might  have  cited  ScougaPs  definition  of  religion, 
as  "the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man."  In  this  divinity  Mr. 
Buckham  believed,  and  this  divinity  he  preached,  to  the 
edification  of  all  who  heard.  It  was  sometimes  remarked 
that  he  seemed  to  cover  both  sides  of  debated  themes.  And 
there  was  reason  for  the  criticism.  He  certainly  preferred 
comprehension  to  the  definitions  and  distinctions  which  lead 
to  division.  He  received  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  from 
Middlebury  in  1900,  and  from  Dartmouth  and  Wesley  an 
in  1909. 

President  Buckham  never  slighted  his  duties  as  citizen. 
He  served  on  the  State  board  of  education  for  the  seven  years 
1867-74;  as  school  commissioner  of  the  city  of  Burlington 
1869-80;  and  one  year  as  examiner  of  the  United  States  Mili- 
tary Academy  at  West  Point.  His  hand  was  on  the  Mary 
Fletcher  Hospital  from  its  inception  till  his  death,  and  the 
Free  Library  of  the  city  of  his  residence  had  the  benefit  of 
his  active  supervision  from  1873.  His  departure  made  not 
one  vacancy,  but  many  vacancies,  in  positions  which  directly 
concern  the  common  weal. 

J.  E.  G. 


A  MASTERPIECE  IN  LIVING 
BY  LEVI  P.  SMITH 

A  LONG  life  amid  scenes  of  beauty,  service  rendered  to  noble 
ends,  the  worth  of  sound  judgment  and  great  learning,  the 
charm  of  fineness  in  appreciation  and  artistry  of  expression 
— all  this  and  more,  mention  of  President  Buckham  will 
always  bring  to  mind;  he  had  withal  an  unfailing  power  of 
growth,  a  something  very  like  perpetual  youth. 

The  last  sixty  years  have  witnessed  such  changes  in  thought, 
such  discoveries  and  inventions,  such  advent  of  all  the  frills 
and  circumstances  of  our  life,  that  we  of  the  extreme  present 
are  tempted  to  feel — and  almost  justified  in  feeling — that 
the  world  began  about  1850.  It  would  seem  that  one  who 
was  a  grown  man  in  1850  must  have  been  hopelessly  shelved 
by  the  seventies,  in  matters  of  up-to-date  thought  at  least, 
and  a  veritable  walking  sarcophagus  in  the  early  twentieth 
century,  or,  missing  that,  have  fallen  into  the  other  calamity 
of  having  his  life  uprooted,  as  it  were,  and  torn  part  from  part 
as  each  successive  discovery  burst  upon  the  world.  The 
really  remarkable  thing  about  President  Buckham's  life  was 
the  way  in  which  he  bridged  this  gap.  He  was  more  active 
and  useful  and  up-to-date  during  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life 
than  at  any  other  time,  and  yet  his  life  was  a  marvel  of  con- 
tinuity. He  did  not  break  with  the  past;  he  grew  out  of  it. 
He  was  looked  upon  as  the  very  embodiment  of  tradition, 
a  kind  of  fortress  of  conservatism,  and  yet  his  baccalaureate 
sermon  of  last  June  contained  the  very  triumph  of  a  quiet, 
sane,  kind  of  heterodoxy. 

This  power  to  be  of  the  present,  and  yet  in  line  with  the 
past,  was  a  part  of  the  very  nature  of  the  man.  His  makeup 

5 


6  THE  VERY  ELECT 

was  two-fold, — the  artist  side  of  him  clinging  to  what  was 
beautiful  and  distinctive  and  human,  and  refusing  to  let 
it  go,  the  keen,  aggressive  intellect,  alert  to  examine  every- 
thing new  and  embrace  it  if  it  stood  the  test.  The  manner 
and  style  of  the  man  were  of  the  past;  his  mind  was  of  the 
present.  There  was  a  finish  and  polish  about  him,  a  gentle- 
ness and  dignity,  which  were  of  the  old  regime.  When  he 
spoke,  his  diction  was  the  diction  of  all  time,  but  his  manner 
was  not  reminiscent.  When  he  wrote  one  of  those  rarely 
beautiful  essays  of  his, — which  he  could  never  be  prevailed 
upon  to  publish  but  circulated  among  his  friends  in  familiar 
white  paper  covers, — he  would  shape  to  his  use  a  goose  quill. 
He  liked  the  smooth  glide  of  a  quill  pen,  and  he  liked,  too, 
the  sense  of  having  one  more  thing  in  common  with  the  great 
writers  of  yore. 

When  President  Buckham  became  instructor  in  Greek  at 
the  University  of  Vermont,  it  must  have  been  a  quaint  and 
primitive  institution,  and  yet,  even  then,  the  home  of  tradi- 
tions and  of  real  culture.  It  was  a  long  way  off  in  those  days, 
a  college  in  the  woods,  almost.  Burlington  was  a  busy  little 
town  nestled  close  beside  the  lake,  with  ample  wharfing,  a 
factory  or  two,  and  an  old,  dismantled  battery  lording  it  over 
the  harbor.  These  were  the  very  old  times;  the  whipping- 
post had  only  recently  been  taken  down.  On  the  east,  where 
a  long  hill  rises  gradually  from  the  lake,  were  scattered  a 
number  of  colonial  mansions,  each  with  its  park-like  setting, 
and  still  farther  away  from  the  town  proper,  at  the  very  crest 
of  this  hill,  was  the  college,  a  long  brick  building,  surmounted 
by  a  blazing  gilt  dome,  visible  on  a  sunny  day  from  Whitehall 
to  Montreal.  Clustered  around  the  college  were  the  homes 
of  the  college  families;  and  a  choicer  little  community,  and 
one  more  remote  from  everything  save  religion  and  learning 
a  man  might  go  far  to  seek. 

This  quiet  town,  with  its  spreading  elms,  its  scattered 
dwellings  and  frugal,  thoughtful  people,  its  lake  and  rugged 


A  MASTERPIECE  IN   LIVING  7 

line  of  Adirondack  Mountains  to  the  west,  its  broad  fields 
and  undulant  Green  Mountains  to  the  east,  was  the  fit  setting 
for  that  long  life,  that  masterpiece  of  living.  How  great  its 
influence  may  have  been  upon  the  man  and  his  work  is  hard 
to  say.  Few  men  have  known  and  loved  the  scenes  and  walks 
of  this  country  better  than  President  Buckham.  And  yet 
he  was  not  an  out-of-door  character,  one  who  haunts  wild 
places  and  hunts  and  tramps  through  them  constantly.  He 
was  the  quiet  man  of  books  and  thoughts,  who  looks  upon 
scenes  and  returns  to  his  study  to  remember  them  again  and 
again  and  think  them  over.  Perhaps  the  beauty  of  them 
got  into  his  thinking  and  living,  and  lent  something  to  the 
poise  and  patience  which  were  his.  Certain  it  is  that  he 
owed  to  the  natural  beauty  of  the  locality  in  which  he 
wrought,  a  deal  of  the  good  company  which  meant  much  to 
him  throughout  life. 

Beautiful  scenes  attract  artists  and  men  of  refinement. 
Remoteness  is  a  lure  to  contemplative  natures.  As  the  years 
came  and  went,  there  was  never  a  time  when  the  little  college 
town  could  not  afford  a  circle  of  choice  spirits,  ready  to  gather 
and  discuss  and  exchange  observations  upon  men  and  events. 
Or,  if  there  was  ever  such  a  time,  it  was  only  in  the  early 
sixties,  when  well  nigh  every  undergraduate  went  to  the  war. 
During  the  five  years  which  immediately  followed  the  war, 
James  B.  Angell  was  President,  and  it  was  when  he  left,  to 
begin  his  long  service  at  the  University  of  Michigan,  that 
President  Buckham  came  to  the  head  of  the  Institution.  In 
the  years  which  followed,  interesting  men  were  never  far 
to  seek.  A  life-long  resident  and  close  friend  of  President 
Buckham  was  Edward  J.  Phelps,  the  cultured  and  brilliant 
jurist  who  followed  Lowell  as  minister  to  England  (that  was 
before  the  days  of  American  ambassadors).  Other  men  with 
whom  he  had  a  long,  close  friendship  were  Senators  Edmunds 
and  Morrill  and  Mr.  John  A.  Kasson.  He  had  a  very  delight- 
ful acquaintance  with  the  architect  Richardson,  and  I  have 


8  THE   VERY   ELECT 

heard  him  quote  J.  Q.  A.  Ward.  The  Vermont  bar  was  excep- 
tionally strong  in  those  days,  and  its  ablest  lawyers,  gravi- 
tating naturally  to  Burlington,  were  an  added  stimulus  to 
the  thought  life  of  the  place.  But  probably  his  longest  and 
closest  fellowships  were  with  a  group  of  men  whose  life  work, 
like  his,  centered  in  the  college,  Professor  Torrey,  Professor 
Barbour,  Mr.  Geo.  Grenville  Benedict,  historian  of  the  Civil 
War,  editor,  scholar,  and  active  trustee  of  the  institution, 
and  others,  some  of  whom  survive  him.  The  life  of  the 
college  community  was  simple  enough,  but  friendly  and  fine. 
At  least  once  every  month  they  all  gathered  in  the  home  of 
one  of  their  number,  to  read  a  play  together,  or  listen  to  music, 
or  hear  the  tales  of  travel  which  some  one  might  have  to  tell, 
a  kind  of  family  club-life,  which  dwellers  in  larger  cities  might 
do  well  to  imitate. 

President  Buckham's  work  may  be  summed  up  briefly  so 
far  as  it  can  be  stated  at  all,  for  a  thing  so  far  reaching  and 
subtle  in  many  of  its  phases  as  a  man's  life  work  is  bound 
to  elude  the  pen,  however  hard  one  may  try  to  reduce  it  to 
written  words.  He  was  chosen  to  lead  a  tiny  college  which 
boasted  itself  a  University  and  yet  lacked  the  housing  of  a 
first-rate  academy;  a  thread-bare  institution  of  high  tradi- 
tions, beautiful  location,  a  few  good  teachers  and  next  to 
nothing  else.  Its  curriculum  was  of  the  narrowest,  its  equip- 
ment was  shabby.  In  its  finances,  there  was  a  chronic 
stringency.  For  years  he  saved  and  scrimped  and  managed. 
He  saw  the  advent  of  a  brood  of  new,  rich  institutions,  whose 
marble  halls  seemed  to  come  to  them  without  the  asking. 
He  saw  the  coming  of  a  time  when  universities  began  bidding 
for  one  another's  instructors.  His  institution  was  not  in  a 
rich  country.  It  was  in  a  small  state  amid  a  farming  people 
and  remote  from  the  centers  of  population.  And  yet  it  had 
a  service  to  perform.  It  was  almost  the  only  place  of  education 
available  to  hundreds  of  lads  from  the  best  stock  of  America. 
Against  these  odds  and  for  this  cause,  he  fought,  manfully, 


A  MASTERPIECE   IN  LIVING  9 

patiently.  He  planned  large,  and  at  length,  when  a  few  of 
those  farmer  boys  had  made  their  way  in  the  world,  he  was 
able  to  interest  them.  Building  after  building  went  up,  and 
department  after  department  was  added,  until  now,  where 
he  found  three  buildings,  he  has  left  nearly  a  score;  where  he 
found  a  university  in  name  only  he  has  left  a  university  in 
fact,  not  rich  to  be  sure,  but  larger  and  committed  to  a  broader 
scheme  of  growth  and  service. 

The  other  and  more  personal  side  of  his  work  was  subtler 
and  infinitely  more  difficult  to  describe,  and  yet  one  might 
venture  to  say  it  was  greater.  He  met  generation  after 
generation  of  youth,  the  best  of  a  hardy  New  England  stock, 
and  quietly  and  not  without  a  certain  reserve  introduced 
into  their  lives  and  thoughts  the  refinements  and  graces  and 
intellectual  joy  which  were  meat  and  drink  to  him.  He  was 
never  extremely  accessible  to  any  man.  When  after  a  vic- 
torious ball  game,  he  cautioned  the  cheering  mob  to  do  nothing 
ungentlemanly,  students  might  misunderstand.  But  these 
very  qualities  were  bound  to  have  their  effect  in  the  end. 
The  man  who  in  all  humility  holds  himself  dear,  in  the  sense 
of  daring  always  to  be  himself,  will  somehow,  some  time  be 
held  dear  by  his  fellow  men.  Along  toward  the  senior  year 
it  began  to  percolate  through  the  skull  of  many  a  lad  that  here 
was  a  nature  different  from  any  he  had  met  before,  and  that 
signified  that  one  more  boy  was  coming  to  know  what  dis- 
tinction of  personality  meant.  Whatever  he  touched  upon 
he  invested  with  quality.  The  chasteness,  the  compression, 
the  melody  of  his  language  were  such  as  I  have  heard  from 
no  other  man.  And  the  richness  and  humanity  of  what  he 
said,  and  the  aptness  of  his  allusions  and  quotations  were  an 
inspiration  and  a  guide.  It  would  be  safe  to  wager  that  no 
student  has  graduated  from  the  University  of  Vermont,  in 
recent  years  at  least,  without  having  his  tastes  a  little  higher, 
or  his  nature  gentler,  or  his  outlook  broader  because  of  the 
contagious  refinement  and  wide  culture  of  the  good  President. 


10  THE  VERY  ELECT 

All  this  wealth  of  suggestion  and  inspiration  was  more 
evident  than  ever  in  the  later  years  of  his  service.  He  was 
one  of  those  rare  men  who  never  stop  growing.  Most  men 
seem  to  ripen  and  then,  having  attained  normal  stature,  cease 
to  grow;  he  went  on  and  on.  And  his  growth  was  ever  in 
the  direction  of  humanity.  One  can  imagine  him  in  early 
years  lost  amid  interminable  pages  of  Greek.  And  in  late 
middle  life,  he  was  capable  of  making  a  strong  political  speech 
and  then,  as  he  took  his  seat,  calmly  inquiring  of  the  man 
next  him  who  the  candidate  might  be.  It  happened  that  the 
man  next  him  was  the  candidate,  but  the  incident  betrays 
an  attention  centered  solely  upon  ideas  and  an  utter  disregard 
of  the  personal  proposition  that  was  entirely  foreign  to  him 
during  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life.  During  these  years  he 
was  constantly  writing,  sympathetically,  understandingly, 
on  current  happenings  in  the  field  of  finance,  in  religous 
thought,  in  politics.  He  followed  the  students,  even  to  the 
extreme  point  of  reading  their  publications — as  one  ex-editor 
can  testify  who  received  a  very  brief  and  unequivocal  note 
of  displeasure  on  the  morning  after  the  issue  of  one  of  these. 
He  was  singularly  free  from  the  prejudice  against  recent  things 
and  ideas  because  of  their  newness.  It  took  a  strident  note  or 
touch  of  the  sensational  to  arouse  him  to  antagonism.  He  al- 
ways counseled  his  students  to  read  at  least  one  London  weekly 
and  one  of  the  great  foreign  reviews,  to  study  about  foreign 
countries  and, — when  the  time  and  money  came, — to  travel. 
And  he  more  than  lived  up  to  his  own  words  in  every  respect. 
Perhaps  the  conscious  effort  to  keep  the  horizon  broad  which 
these  counselings  seemed  to  indicate,  together  with  patience 
to  plan  for  the  future,  and  the  high-heartedness  always  to 
treat  himself  as  young,  may  be  the  key  to  his  secret  of  per- 
petual youth  and  perpetual  growth. 

President  Buckham  probably  never  had  a  money-making 
thought, — at  least  not  for  himself.  His  greatest  salary  was 
hardly  more  than  is  earned  by  a  competent  city  bookkeeper. 


A  MASTERPIECE  IN  LIVING  11 

Yet  he  spent  a  long  life  industriously.  He  possessed  unusual 
ability.  He  was  a  recognized  leader  among  men.  He  cer- 
tainly never  was  in  want.  He  never  lacked  the  respect  of 
men.  He  had  the  open  sesame  to  rarest  fellowships.  He 
had  the  means  and  leisure  for  travel.  He  could  grow  wonder- 
ful roses  in  his  own  garden,  and  time  and  again  was  able  to 
pick  up  some  choice  print  or  folio,  all  the  dearer  because  he 
was  helped  to  it  by  fine  discrimination  rather  than  a  long 
purse.  He  knew  the  joy  of  weaving  words  into  forms  beautiful 
and  expressive  of  every  varying  shade  of  thought.  He  had 
in  full  measure  the  satisfaction  that  comes  of  service  well  done. 
A  long,  good  life,  amid  beautiful  scenes, — Who  can  say  it  was 
not  the  wealthiest  and  happiest  and  most  fortunate  life? 


MATTHEW  HENRY  BUCKHAM:  AN  APPRECIATION  l 
BY  DARWIN  P.  KINGSLEY 

IN  THE  history  of  Vermont  as  a  rebellious  and  unattached 
territory,  and  in  her  history  as  an  independent  republic,  two 
men  stand  out  above  all  others:  Ira  Allen,  the  founder  of 
the  University  of  Vermont,  and  his  brother  Ethan,  the  almost 
mythological  hero  of  the  New  Hampshire  Grants.  In  the 
history  of  Vermont  as  a  State,  covering  nearly  one  hundred 
and  twenty  years,  many  men  stand  out,  but  in  my  judgment 
three  men  stand  pre-eminent:  Thomas  Chittenden,  Justin 
Swan  Morrill  and  Matthew  Henry  Buckham. 

Governor  Chittenden's  place  has  been  confirmed  and 
emphasized  by  the  final  arbiter  of  all  greatness,  the  passage 
of  time. 

Senator  MorrilPs  fame  rests  on  foundations  as  broad  as 
the  nation  itself,  and  with  each  passing  year  he  is  increasingly 
recognized  as  having  been  one  of  the  creatively  wise,  the 
sanely  patriotic  statesmen  of  a  period  that  demanded  and 
produced  giants. 

Matthew  Henry  Buckham's  right  to  rank  with  Chittenden 
and  Morrill  will  not  be  instantly  recognized  or  conceded  by 
all,  not  even  by  all  Vermonters.  His  life  and  work  were  not 
the  kind  that  usually  or  indeed  often  command  quick  recog- 
nition. He  was  not  the  political  head  of  the  State;  he  did 
not  reach  nor  seem  to  care  to  reach  the  popular  imagination. 
He  did  not  stand  in  the  Senate  House  and  battle  for  sound 
money  and  the  nation's  credit.  He  created  in  the  youth  of 
the  State  the  sound  minds  which  gave  political  leaders  sane 

'A  Paper  read  before  the  New  York  Alumni  Association  of  the  University 
of  Vermont,  February  17,  1910. 

12 


AN  APPRECIATION  13 

audiences.  He  moulded  the  intellects  and  the  morals  which 
lie  back  of  good  politics.  His  fame  will  rest  on  labors  as 
undramatic  and  as  vital  as  wholesome  food  and  pure  air. 
Vermont  produces  men.  Why?  The  life  work  of  President 
Buckham  gives  us  a  large  part  of  the  answer  to  that  question. 
In  a  few  words,  what  manner  of  man  was  he?  What  did  he 
accomplish? 

First  of  all  he  was  a  scholar,  using  the  word  in  its  finer  and 
— shall  I  say? — earlier  significance.  He  exhaled  no  atmos- 
phere of  pedantry  or  bookishness.  His  scholarship  found 
expression  in  the  exquisite  refinement  of  his  mind,  in  his 
quick  and  broad  sympathies,  in  his  intellectual  and  moral 
standards.  Mere  learning — which  not  infrequently  kills 
the  spirit — he  cared  little  for.  He  was  "orthodox"  mentally 
and  spiritually,  but  as  applied  to  him  the  word  loses  all 
offense.  He  stood  by  his  standards,  but  he  loved  the  truth 
above  all  things  and  was  never  afraid  to  follow  whithersoever 
it  might  lead  him.  He  loved  the  old  classical  college  training; 
but  he  early  recognized  the  trend  of  modern  life  and  instead 
of  opposing  he  led  it  in  the  recent  development  ot  the  Univer- 
sity. He  loved  the  standards  of  Congregationalism,  but  if 
the  Church  as  a  whole  had  met  the  discoveries  of  science 
in  the  spirit  that  actuated  him,  there  would  have  been  no 
conflict  between  Science  and  Religion. 

He  was  a  modest  man,  as  all  brave  men  are.  He  hated 
shams.  He  had  a  fine  sense  of  humor,  that  saving  grace. 
He  had  a  deep  pride  in  the  careers  and  work  of  the  men  and 
women  whose  lives  he  had  strongly  influenced.  But  of  this 
one  got  only  flashes  now  and  then.  His  consciousness  of 
the  fact  that  he  had  profoundly  influenced  certain  careers, 
he  guarded  jealously.  But  here,  it  seems  to  me,  was  his 
highest  conscious  reward.  I  don't  believe  he  ever  thought 
of  how  the  world  would  hold  him  after  he  was  gone.  He 
was  a  shy  man.  This  quality  caused  him  not  infrequently 
to  be  misunderstood  by  the  students. 


14  THE   VERY   ELECT 

At  thirty-nine — having  already  been  related  more  or  less 
closely  to  the  College  for  over  twenty  years — he  came  to  the 
headship  of  the  University  of  Vermont.  He  found  it  almost 
penniless;  he  left  it  after  forty  years  with  an  annual  income 
which  represents  an  invested  value  aggregating  well  over 
$4,000,000.  He  found  it  almost  without  buildings;  he  left 
it  architecturally  surpassed  by  few  New  England  seats  of 
learning,  if  indeed  it  is  surpassed  by  any.  He  found  it  almost 
without  students;  he  left  it  with  a  body  of  undergraduates 
two-thirds  as  large  as  that  of  Yale  University  when  he  began 
his  presidency  in  1871.  He  found  it  without  distinct  standing 
in  Vermont;  he  left  it  the  leading  institution  of  the  State. 
He  found  it  a  struggling  college;  he  laid  the  foundations  and 
built  some  of  the  superstructure  of  a  real  university. 

For  forty  years  he  moulded  the  character  of  Burlington 
and  of  the  State.  He  went  about  it  so  quietly  that  few 
realized  his  power.  He  set  a  standard  of  public  speaking 
and  of  writing  that  few  college  presidents  have  ever  reached 
— standards  by  which  all  his  successors  will  be  measured. 
He  toiled  and  struggled  and  hoped.  His  toil  bore  fruit; 
his  struggles  triumphed;  his  hopes  came  to  be  realized. 

He  saw  the  College  transformed — in  its  equipment,  in  its 
courses,  in  its  endowment.  He  lived  to  see  the  completion 
of  the  first  great  step  toward  an  adequate  endowment. 

Chittenden  needs  no  monument,  neither  does  Morrill, 
and  I  add  neither  does  President  Buckham.  The  University 
is  his  monument.  The  greater  we  make  that,  the  surer  and 
larger  his  fame.  The  University  of  Vermont  can  no  more 
be  separated  at  any  time  from  the  life  and  labors  of  Matthew 
Henry  Buckham,  than  the  State  of  Vermont  can  be  separated 
from  the  labors  of  Chittenden.  His  place  in  its  history  is 
as  fixed  as  are  the  outlines  of  Mansfield  in  the  exquisite  pano- 
rama which  has  daily  changed  its  pictures  and  shifted  its 
scenery  before  the  eyes  of  a  century  of  successive  classes. 

If  I  may  so  speak  without  being  misunderstood,  President 


AN  APPRECIATION  15 

Buckham  lived  too  much  the  life  of  the  spirit.  His  spirit- 
uality, intellectual  refinement,  sensitiveness  and  modesty 
denied  him  a  kind  of  success  as  an  administrator  which  the 
world  rates  high;  but  that  success — if  he  had  achieved  it — 
would  not  be  dearer  to  some  of  us  than  our  memories  of 
President  Buckham  as  he  was. 

It  was  his  habit  (through  occasional  correspondence)  to 
give  some  of  "his  boys"  fugitive  glimpses  of  the  deep  affec- 
tions he  cherished.  If  he  found  a  bit  of  fine  poetry  in  a 
current  magazine  or  review,  he  would  clip  it  out  and  send  it. 
The  poems  that  came  to  me  always  expressed  the  attitude 
of  the  spiritually  minded  man  toward  the  scenes  and  loves 
of  earlier  days.  Some  years  ago  he  sent  me  and  told  me  to 
keep  a  little  poem  entitled  "  An  Old  Virgil".1  A  quarter  of 
a  century  had  passed  since  I  left  the  University.  More  than 
a  half  century  had  passed  since  he  had,  as  a  college  student, 
laid  aside  his  Aeneid.  But  if  anyone  questions  whether  he 
cherished,  almost  sentimentally,  the  spirit  of  his  youth  or 
that  he  kept  the  fires  of  affection  always  burning,  let  him 
listen  : 

A  faded,  shabby  little  book, 

Besmeared  with  many  an  inky  stain, 
Down  from  my  silent  shelves  I  took, 

And  turned  the  well-worn  leaves  again. 
Not  dearer  to  the  scholar's  heart 

His  tomes  of  vellum  and  of  gold 
Than  this  which  has  become  a  part 

And  parcel  of  the  days  of  old. 

Around  each  page,  from  far-off  years, 

The  glamour  of  one's  boyhood  clings 
And  wakes  once  more  the  sense  of  tears, 

The  sadness  at  the  heart  of  things. 


W.  H.  Savile — The  Spectator. 


16  THE  VERY  ELECT 

We  saw  not  then  the  soul  that  lay 

Beneath  the  wistful,  tender  phrase, 
Nor  thought  how  there  would  come  a  day 

When  we  had  gone  our  different  ways 
When  that  sweet  charm,  that  magic  touch 

Would  pierce  the  heart  with  sudden  pain, 
And  make  us  long — Ah  me!  how  much! — 

To  see  that  Form-room  once  again. 


Observation  teaches  me  that  many  students  did  not  see 
in  President  Buckham  "the  soul  that  lay  beneath  the  wistful, 
tender  phrase,"  but  now  the  day  has  come,  we  having  "gone 
our  different  ways,"  when  that  sweet  dignity  which  marked 
his  every  act  and  thought  rises  before  us  to  "pierce  the  heart 
with  sudden  pain. " 

Whatever  of  the  great  prizes  of  life  any  of  us  may  have 
won,  or  may  hereafter  win,  there  will  always  rest  on  the 
shelves  of  memory  an  ink-stained  volume,  redolent  of  youth 
whenever  we  tenderly  take  it  down,  recalling,  when  its  leaves 
are  turned,  that  gentle  yet  strong  figure  which  has  indeed 
now  become  "a  part  and  parcel  of  the  days  of  old." 

A  college  or  university  training  is  a  succession  of  re-gener- 
ations. President  Buckram  was  our  intellectual  and  moral 
father — the  head  of  those  regenerating  forces  which  transform 
and  re-transform,  awaken  and  re-awaken,  mould  and  re-mould. 
"A  part  and  parcel  of  the  days  of  old"  he  is,  but  equally  a 
part  and  parcel  of  us  as  we  are  tonight.  So  by  the  law  of 
the  limitless  sphere  in  which  we  came  under  his  tutelage,  he 
will  forever  remain  a  part  and  parcel  of  the  University,  of 
the  State,  and  of  the  scholar's  larger  world. 

He  sent  me  a  little  manuscript  poem  last  summer,  the  author 
of  which  he  did  not  know.  He  was  then  revisiting  the  scenes 
of  his  childhood,  seeking  the  vigor  that  did  not  return.  He 
was  amid  scenes  which  had  power  to  recreate  for  him  his 
long-departed  youth.  This  poem  expresses  his  emotions, 
voices  his  affections  and  his  regret.  It  told  and  tells  how  a 


AN  APPRECIATION  17 

brave  man  can  face  the  tragedy  of  age  with  the  songs  of 
youth  on  his  lips. 

Sweet  tangled  banks  where  ox-eyed  daisies  grow 

And  scarlet  poppies  gleam; 
Sweet  changing  lights  that  ever  come  and  go 

Upon  the  quiet  stream! 

Once  more  I  see  the  flash  of  splendid  wings 

As  dragon-flies  flit  by; 
Once  more  for  me  the  small  sedge-warbler  sings 

Beneath  a  sapphire  sky. 

Once  more  I  feel  the  simple,  fresh  content 

I  found  hi  stream  and  soil, 
When  golden  summers  slowly  came  and  went 

And  mine  was  all  their  spoil. 

The  spirit  of  these  lines  so  reflects  the  spirit  of  the  man, 
his  refinement,  his  fine  feeling,  that  we  may  well  believe,  he 
having  passed  from  our  sight,  that  he  has  indeed  found  those 
" tangled  banks"  where  " scarlet  poppies  gleam,"  that  he 
has  caught  "the  flash  of  splendid  wings,"  and  that  "beneath 
a  sapphire  sky"  his  "golden  summers"  live  again. 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS 

IThe  only  reason  for  venturing  to  add  to  the  foregoing  appreciations 
and  others  which  have  been  published,  without  attempting  a  full  biography 
of  my  father,  is  in  order  to  dwell  a  little  longer  on  those  traits  which  all 
who  knew  and  loved  him  valued,  and  also  to  represent  his  aims  and  ideals 
in  words  of  his  own,  and  thus  to  fulfil,  as  far  as  possible,  his  own  estimate 
of  unconscious  autobiography  as  on  the  whole  the  best  and  most  beneficent 
account  of  a  man's  life.] 

I.  IN  COMMON  with  others  who  have  sought  the  secret  of  my 
father's  work  and  usefulness,  I  find  it  first  of  all,  though  not 
most  of  all,  in  the  breadth  and  comprehensiveness  of  his 
knowledge  and  attainments.  Given  a  mind  of  native  alert- 
ness and  grasp,  trained  by  a  thorough  disciplinarian  with 
parental  care,  the  rest  came  largely  through  two  avenues, 
reading  and  travel.  His  reading  began  early  and  was  never 
abandoned.  He  was  not  only  a  constant  reader  but  an 
ardent  lover  of  books,  and  he  never  failed  to  commend  the 
joy  and  gain  that  comes  from  good  books.  In  a  day  when 
such  a  privilege  was  rarer  than  now  and  at  the  cost  of  much 
self-denial  he  traveled.  After  his  student  days  in  London 
University,  he  wandered  with  knapsack  and  note  book  over 
much  of  Europe,  recording  his  impressions  in  a  series  of  letters 
published  in  the  Courier  and  Enquirer  of  New  York.  When 
after  his  two  years  of  teaching  at  Lenox,  he  returned  to  his 
Alma  Mater  as  instructor  in  Greek  he  was  not  only  a  good 
scholar  in  that  subject,  but  capable  as  he  soon  proved,  of 
teaching  English  literature,  rhetoric  and  Latin.  Upon  the 
broad  foundation  thus  early  laid  he  built  broadly  and  richly 
until  the  wealth  and  resources  of  his  mind  became  the  joy 
and  enrichment  of  all  who  knew  him.  It  was  quite  other  than 
that  fund  of  information  which  so  many  men  possess;  his 

18 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS  19 

was  rather  a  treasure  of  well-ordered  and  harmonious  reflec- 
tions expressed  in  language  so  chaste  and  captivating  as  to 
give  to  his  teaching,  his  public  speech,  his  conversation  the 
charm  at  once  elevating  and  instructive,  to  which  so  many  of 
his  students  and  friends  have  paid  tribute.  Never  argumenta- 
tive, extravagant  or  dogmatic,  he  presented  his  case  with 
so  fine  a  clarity  and  sobriety  as  to  lend  a  kind  of  "sweet 
reasonableness,"  of  completeness  and  finality  to  his  utter- 
ances. 

Comprehensiveness  of  knowledge  begat  breadth  of  outlook 
and  sympathy.  The  list  of  great  causes  and  issues  as  well 
as  of  less  vital  pursuits  and  interests  in  which  he  was  vividly 
and  productively  interested  is  significant.  As  citizen  and 
patriot  his  was  no  scholarly  aloofness  and  indifference.  His 
country  was  to  him  worthy  not  only  of  love  but  of  service. 
He  was  conscientious  in  all  of  his  civic  duties  and  a  loyal 
member  of  his  political  party.  He  was  always  stirred  by 
allusions  to  the  Civil  War,  always  attended  the  Memorial 
Day  gatherings  and  spoke  with  deep  feeling  and  sympathy, 
and  took  pride  in  the  record  of  Vermont  soldiers.  The  State 
of  Vermont  was  as  dear  to  him  as  to  any  of  her  native  sons, 
and  he  was  as  true  a  Vermonter  as  ever  lived  within  the  shadow 
of  Mount  Mansfield.  Her  welfare  was  to  him  paramount, 
her  character  and  possibilities  unsurpassed.  In  an  address 
given  many  years  ago  to  the  teachers  of  the  State  he  said: 
"I  want  to  impress  upon  the  teachers  this  thought,  that  to 
us  as  a  body  is  largely  committed  the  great  responsibility  of 
bringing  out  into  active  beneficent  power  the  vast  amount  of 
latent  intellect  with  which  God  has  endowed  the  Vermont 
character,  power  enough,  if  developed,  not  only  to  multiply 
tenfold  the  aggregate  production,  material  and  spiritual, 
of  our  State,  but  to  Vermontize,  so  to  speak,  half  the  other 
states  of  the  Union."  To  "Vermontize"  meant  to  him  to 
endow  with  the  sturdiest  and  finest  qualities  of  brain  and 
heart.  He  was  fond  of  comparing  the  people  of  Vermont 


20  THE  VERY  ELECT 

to  the  Scotch;  and  at  the  twelfth  annual  meeting  of  the 
Alumni  Association  of  Boston  in  1898,  he  said,  in  a  character- 
istically playful  vein;  "As  the  good  Father  could  not  make 
all  his  children  Scotchmen,  after  he  had  made  enough  to  be 
an  example  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  enough  to  fill  most 
of  the  places  of  honor  and  profit  in  the  world,  then  he  made 
another  people  that  were  just  as  nearly  like  the  Scotch  as 
he  could  make  them  without  repeating  himself, — that  is, 
he  made  the  New  England  Yankee,  especially  the  Vermonter. " 
Whereupon  he  proceeded  to  draw  out  the  likeness.  And  if 
he  was  a  good  Vermonter,  he  was  an  even  better  Burlingtonian. 

Not  less  faithful  was  he  to  the  claims  of  the  Church  than 
to  those  of  the  State.  The  Church  was  always  an  object  of 
his  affection  and  service.  He  counted  worship  "the  highest 
act  of  the  soul;"  and  one  of  his  favorite  themes  of  study  and 
discussion  was  the  enrichment  of  the  order  of  worship.  To 
his  own  denomination  he  was  inflexibly  loyal  and  his  counsel 
and  service  were  as  freely  given  as  they  were  frequently  sought. 
He  was  also  most  faithful  to  his  own  College  Street  Church, 
constant  in  attendance  and  always  ready  to  help.  And  yet 
he  was  so  catholic  as  to  embrace  all  sects  and  denominations 
in  his  interest, — a  strong  opponent  of  the  "spirit  which  creates 
factions"  and  an  earnest  advocate  of  Christian  Unity.1  Theo- 
logically he  was  liberal  yet  not  radical,  progressive  yet  com- 
prehensive. 

The  family,  too,  was  not  overlooked  in  his  endeavors  to  do 
his  utmost  part  to  conserve  the  foundations  of  society.  He 
never  failed  to  recognize  and  emphasize  the  primary  place 
of  the  home  among  human  institutions.  He  was  one  of  the 
founders  and  a  life-long  director  of  the  New  England  League 
(now  the  National  League)  for  the  Protection  of  the  Family. 

Deeply  concerned  with  the  large  issues  of  life,  he  was  in 
no  way  indifferent  to  its  amenities.  Art  was — not  a  passion 

i Sermon:  "Is  Christ  Divided?"  preached  at  First  Church,  Burlington, 
in  1909. 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS  21 

—but  an  unfailing  source  of  delight  and  refreshment  to  him. 
His  taste  in  architecture  was  recognized  as  of  the  best,  as 
•was  also  his  judgment  of  a  picture.  A  lecture  on  "Art," 
another  on  "Engraving,"  and  an  unfinished  lecture  on  Archi- 
tecture reveal  the  study  which  he  had  given  to  these  subjects. 
Literature  was  not  only  a  fountain  of  knowledge  but  of  joy 
to  him,  and  he  understood  the  composition  and  flavor  of 
good  literature  as  one  to  the  manner  born  and  to  the  art 
cultivated.  A  nature-lover  he  was,  too,  and  loved  walking 
and  woods  and  birds  and  mountains  and  the  perpetual  charm 
of  the  sea.  The  shy  sweet-scented  flower  of  the  Pilgrims, 
the  trailing  arbutus,  was,  I  think,  his  favorite  wild-flower, 
as  the  imperial  rose  which  he  cultivated  so  assiduously  was 
the  pride  and  delight  of  his  garden.  Those  who  as  friends 
and  neighbors  knew  him  best  will  always  associate  his  memory 
with  the  fragrance  of  roses.  How  rare  is  the  strong  man 
who  also  loves  beauty !  Travel  became  increasingly  a  recreation 
to  him  and  he  loved  to  wander  at  will  especially  in  Scotland, 
England  and  Holland.  The  diversity  of  his  interests  is 
indicated  by  two  illustrated  lectures  which  were  the  fruit 
of  one  summer  abroad, — one  on  "the  Jersey  Cow  at  Home" 
and  one  on  Oxford  University.  Not  that  he  held  them  at 
the  same  value,  nor  loved  Jersey  less  but  Oxford  more!  As 
a  final  evidence  of  the  comprehensiveness  of  his  acquirements 
one  need  only  recall  that  he  began  his  University  instruction 
with  Greek  and  closed  it  with  Economics  and  International 
Law,  and  was  master  of  all. 

But  broad  as  was  the  scope  of  his  interests  and  activities, 
all  and  always  were  subordinated  to  his  one  supreme  and 
absorbing  vocation,  Education — and  Education  as  centered 
in  the  University  of  Vermont.  Day  and  night  he  planned 
and  dreamed,  labored  and  sacrificed  that  this  institution, 
to  which  he  had  given  his  life,  and  from  which  he  refused  to 
be  lured,  might  be  forwarded  in  all  noble  advance  and  achieve- 
ment. Even  in  the  illness  and  exhaustion  of  the  summer 


22  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  1910  in  England  he  busied  himself  with  University  papers 
and  affairs.  The  result  of  this  long  devoted  service  was  not 
lost.  In  a  moment  of  more  than  generous  appreciation  one 
of  his  older  colleagues  in  the  Faculty  said  of  him:  "He  not 
only  made  the  University,  he  was  the  University/'  recalling 
his  own  words  about  Abelard,  "He  was  a  whole  university 
in  himself." 

If  the  range  of  his  mental  life  was  comprehensive,  equally 
so  was  his  view  and  treatment  of  every  subject  to  which  he 
gave  his  attention,  from  education  to  rose-culture.  His 
inaugural  address  in  1871  was  an  effective  defense  of  the 
place  of  science  just  then  claiming  recognition  beside  the 
humanities  in  the  college  curriculum,  and  his  last  significant 
utterance  upon  the  same  subject  was  an  equally  strong  appeal, 
before  the  New  York  Alumni,  for  the  conservation  of  the 
classics,  now  in  danger  of  being  thrust  out  by  the  well-domi- 
ciled invader.  The  principle  which  he  consistently  applied 
to  all  the  newer  studies,  including  Agriculture  and  Domestic 
Science,  which  he  so  readily  incorporated  in  the  curriculum 
was  this,  as  stated  in  his  brief  paper  in  The  Vermont  Cynic, 
entitled  "Hospitality":  "We  have  come  to  see  that  not 
the  material  of  study  but  its  method  and  its  spirit  is  what 
fits  or  unfits  it  to  be  a  scholarly  pursuit."  The  true  spirit 
he  proceeded  to  define  as  humanistic,  "that  is,  that  the  human 
in  us,  or  some  one  of  its  many  sides,  may  be  brought  out  and 
made  the  most  of. "  Culture  itself,  which  he  so  loved  to  praise 
and  to  promote,  he  consistently  subjected  to  the  same  test. 
If  not  human  it  was  not  true,  and  he  never  failed  to  place 
character  higher  than  culture  and  to  honor  most  the  life  of 
the  spirit,  which  he  held  to  be  of  supreme  worth. 

II.  Already  there  has  been  indicated  another  character- 
istic quality,  which  gave  value  and  tone  to  his  comprehen- 
siveness, namely  an  equally  rare  and  fine  discrimination. 
If  he  had  breadth,  he  had  also  discernment.  If  his  mind  was 
inclusive,  it  was  also  selective.  "He  had  an  innate  aesthetic 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS  23 

sense,  which  had  been  strengthened  and  intensified  by  his 
early  studies  of  Greek  art  and  character;  and  the  fine  per- 
ception of  proportion  and  of  the  eternal  fitness  of  things 
which  he  thus  developed  shaped  his  character,  moulded  his 
thought  and  formulated  his  speech."1  If  he  presented,  as 
was  said  of  him,  both  sides  of  a  question,  he  never  failed  also 
to  draw  with  delicate  but  firm  hand  the  lines  of  his  own 
conviction  and  preference.  Few  men  had  a  clearer  or  keener 
insight  into  real  merit  in  men  and  things.  The  showy,  the 
cheap,  the  second-rate,  the  incompetent  in  a  book,  a  speech, 
a  sermon,  a  picture,  a  building,  he  instantly  detected  and — 
condemned?  No,  but  set  aside  charitably  yet  resolutely. 
And  the  high  and  fine  standard  of  excellence  which  he  set 
himself  he  succeeded  in  arousing  in  others.  He  was  constantly 
seeking  to  lead  us  all  "to  approve  the  things  that  are  excellent." 
To  raise  the  criteria  of  excellence,  to  dismiss  inferiority  and 
send  it  to  the  rear,  to  make  men  dissatisfied  with  anything 
but  the  best  attainable, — this  was  the  effect,  if  not  the  con- 
scious object,  of  his  own  purpose  and  example. 

It  is  to  this  discriminating  demand  for  the  best  that  the 
admirable  architecture  of  most  of  the  buildings  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Vermont  is  largely  due.  He  coveted  the  very  noblest 
buildings  possible  for  the  University.  When  the  first  designs 
for  the  new  library  building  were  submitted  he  called  me  into 
his  study  to  show  me  one,  which  to  my  untrained  eye,  seemed 
imposing  and  perfect.  But  it  did  not  satisfy  him.  Nothing 
satisfied  him,  or  the  munificent  donor  of  the  building,  until 
they  found  the  greatest  living  American  architect  and  secured 
from  him  one  of  his  very  choicest  plans.  And  while  the 
building  was  in  process  of  erection  he  watched  it  with  eagle 
eye.  One  day  as  the  masons  were  putting  in  the  ornamental 
work  on  either  side  of  the  great  arch  he  observed  that  it  was 
of  a  dark  granite,  which  was  so  conspicuous  as  to  mar  the 
perfect  harmony  and  simplicity  of  the  beautiful  front.  He 

i  Editorial  in  the  Burlington  Free  PreSs,  December  1,  1910. 


24  THE   VERY  ELECT 

at  once  took  the  liberty  to  have  the  work  arrested  until  Mr. 
Richardson  could  be  consulted,  with  the  result  that  the  stone 
was  made  uniform  throughout.  The  incident,  slight  as  it 
is,  indicates  the  affectionate  care  with  which  he  gave  his 
mind  and  heart  to  the  architectural  enrichment  of  the  Univer- 
sity. 

III.  Yet  this  large  comprehensiveness  and  this  fine  judg- 
ment would  have  been  but  inconsequential  and  barren,  as 
like  qualities  have  been  in  so  many  men,  had  they  not  been 
motived  and  vitalized  by  an  untiring,  indomitable,  well- 
directed  faith  and  courage.  His  commitment  to  his  ideals 
was  entire.  His  were  no  napkin  talents.  He  made  devoted 
use  of  all  his  powers.  His  life  was  marked  by  steady  advance 
in  self-discipline  and  self-culture,  and  yet  it  was  under  the 
spur  of  no  selfish  ambition  but  in  order  better  to  serve  his 
generation.  We  find  something  of  the  secret  of  his  own  life 
reflected  in  these  words  of  his:  "The  aim  of  Christianity, 
St.  Paul  says,  is  to  present  every  man  perfect  in  Christ  Jesus, 
that  is,  to  empower  every  man  to  make  the  most  of  himself. 
This  position  is  rescued  from  all  taint  of  selfishness  by  the 
consideration  that  every  man  under  the  Christian  conception 
of  character,  can  make  the  most  of  himself  only  by  federating 
himself  with  others  in  the  effort  to  make  the  most  of  them- 
selves and  thus  perfecting  all  men."  This  kind  of  self- 
development  is  most  consonant  with  the  modesty  which  so 
many  have  remarked  in  him  and  which  he  so  highly  prized 
in  others,  modesty,  which  he  was  accustomed  to  call  "the 
distinguishing  virtue  of  the  school-master,"  playfully  exclud- 
ing "one  of  our  great  predecessors,  Socrates,  who  had  humility 
but  not  modesty,  and  another,  Aristotle,  who  had  neither." 
If  this  modesty  kept  him,  perhaps,  from  receiving  the  degree 
of  recognition  that  he  merited,  it  kept  him  also  from  the 
self-assertion  which  he  so  distrusted.  On  the  whole  his  life 
is  a  refutation  of  the  too  current  notion  that  in  order  to  win 
success  one  must  advertise  himself. 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS  25 

Happily,  too,  his  serious  devotement  of  his  powers  to  high 
ends  was  not  narrowed,  as  it  sometimes  is,  by  an  overstrained 
earnestness.  He  always  preferred  the  term  seriousness  to 
earnestness  and  his  temperament  was  serious  rather  than 
strenuous.  He  had,  as  so  many  have  remarked  with  pleasure, 
the  saving  grace  of  humor.  It  lit  up  as  genially  the  life  of  the 
home  as  the  table  at  which  he  was  a  guest,  and  coined  itself 
in  many  a  cherished  phrase  that  has  become  current  among 
those  nearest  to  him.  His  humor,  as  is  so  often  the  case 
with  brave  spirits,  was  an  expression  of  courage  and  good 
cheer.  A  courage  like  his  is  bound  to  be  cheerful,  although  in 
face  of  obstacles  sure  to  be  met  with  it  is  often  silent  and  pre- 
occupied. It  was  a  humor  sui  generis,  playful,  quiet,  gracious, 
never  broad  or  harsh.  He  has  himself  well  defined  the  nature 
of  true  humor  in  an  article  on  "The  Element  of  Danger  in 
Humor"1  in  which  occur  these  words:  "  Whenever  or  wherever 
humor  so  far  belies  itself  as  to  bring  with  it  the  smallest  scin- 
tilla of  ill-will,  nay  more,  when  it  forgets  for  a  single  moment 
its  promise  and  obligation  to  promote  universal  good-will 
and  unalloyed  pleasure,  it  forfeits  all  claims  to  the  privileges 
of  humor." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  he  was  an  optimist.  Optimism 
was  creed  as  well  as  temper  and  practise  with  him — "An 
honest  optimism"  it  was,  "true  to  things  as  they  are  and  the 
God  of  things  as  they  are."2  With  this  optimism  he  entered 
upon  his  life-work  and  it  was  steadily  maintained  to  the 
close,  as  was  evidenced  for  example  in  all  his  baccalaureate 
sermons  and  addresses  to  the  students  upon  all  manner  of 
things  from  "The  Love  of  Difficulty"  to  "The  Economic 
Situation."  Few  more  discerning  and  hopeful  words  have 
been  spoken  concerning  the  tendencies  toward  luxury  and 
the  love  of  ease  in  this  country  which  are  so  disturbing  to 
every  thoughtful  American  than  these  of  his  in  a  Fore- 

*  Vermont  Cynic. 

« Sermon  on  Christian  Optimism. 


26  THE  VERY  ELECT 

fathers'  Day  address:  "The  truth  is,  I  suppose,  that  we  are 
just  now  in  that  perhaps  inevitable  condition  of  extravagance 
which  lies  between  two  simplicities.  We  have  left  behind 
the  primitive  simplicity  of  poverty  and  are  advancing,  we 
trust,  toward  that  higher  simplicity  which  is  the  last  fruit 
of  fine  culture."  May  these  words  prove  directive  as  well 
as  prophetic!  They  are  the  words,  as  were  all  of  his,  of  an 
idealist,  but  of  an  idealist  whose  feet  stood  on  firm  ground 
and  whose  judgment  was  as  careful  as  it  was  hopeful.  In 
the  manuscript  of  a  characteristic  lecture  on  "Common 
Sense"  these  revealing  sentences  are  found  in  the  course 
of  a  sagacious  analysis  of  the  excellencies  and  limitations 
of  this  homely  and  often  despised  virtue:  "Common  sense 
is  the  necessary  substratum  for  the  richer  soil  out  of  which 
grow  the  finer  flowers  and  fruits  of  human  nature.  Good 
sense  logically  precedes  fine  sense.  Given  a  good  solid 
foundation  and  well-buttressed  walls,  then  your  towers  and 
pinnacles,  your  lofty  aspirations  and  your  airy  idealisms 
are  both  safe  and  comely."  After  an  eloquent  tribute  to 
the  English  race  as  the  nation  that  has  won  most  of  the  great 
achievements  of  idealism  on  the  basis  of  sound  common 
sense,  he  continues:  "If  we  turn  now  from  the  present  to 
the  future  and  look  at  the  work  yet  lying  before  the  human 
race,  at  the  great  problems,  political,  social,  artistic,  industrial, 
yet  to  be  solved,  and  ask  what  should  be  the  characteristics  of 
the  men  equal  to  these  great  demands,  we  shall  find  ourselves 
thinking  of  an  ideal  race,  combining  the  conservative  good 
sense  which  appropriates  all  the  good  man  has  wrought  out 
hitherto  and  the  progressive,  restless,  daring  genius  which 
conceives  and  executes  greater  things  than  any  past  dreamed 
of.  That  race,  if  constituted  of  any  race-elements  now 
existing,  must  in  its  physical  make-up  unite  Teutonic  phlegm 
with  Celtic  blood;  in  its  intellectual  characteristics  add  to 
British  thoroughness  Norman  grace;  in  its  moral  fibre  inter- 
twine Puritan  fidelity  with  Cavalier  enthusiasm.  It  must  be 


IDEALS  AND   AIMS  27 

a  people  capable  of  being  inspired  by  history,  and  yet  more 
capable  of  inspiration  by  ideas.  What  if  it  should  prove 
to  be  the  American  race?" 

His  courageous  optimism,  which  not  only  saw  visions  but 
wrought  them  into  reality,  was  rooted  and  nourished  in 
religious  faith.  His  religious  life  was  as  sane  and  simple 
as  it  was  deep  and  vital.  No  one  who  heard  him  conduct 
family  or  chapel  devotion,  or  pray  in  a  prayer-meeting,  or 
preach  a  baccalaureate  sermon  had  the  least  doubt  of  that. 
God  to  him  was  the  central  fact  of  the  universe.  His  existence 
did  not  rest  on  argument  or  demonstration  but  on  personal 
experience.  "  Practically  our  knowledge  of  God  is  personal 
knowledge.  The  knowledge  of  a  person  is  easier,  more 
direct,  more  certain,  than  the  knowledge  of  a  proposition. 
I  have  not  seen  God  nor  touched  him  nor  heard  his  voice. 
I  never  shall  see  him.  The  archangel  who  stands  nearest 
him  does  not  see  him.  A  visible,  tangible,  audible  God  would 
be  no  God.  The  God  we  know  is  a  Spirit  and  we  know  him 
as  spirit  knows  spirit,  by  communion,  by  sympathy,  by 
devotion.  We  know  whom  we  have  believed. " 

Religion  was  to  my  father  not  a  gloomy,  ascetic  restraint, 
but  a  fountain  of  life,  freedom,  hope.  "  Christianity  allies 
itself  to  the  prospective,  not  the  retrospective,  stage  of  man's 
life.  It  forgets  things  behind  and  reaches  forth  to  things 
before.  No  man  that  looketh  back  is  fit  for  the  kingdom 
of  God. "  l  Nor  is  religion,  as  he  regarded  it,  a  matter  of  times 
and  places  and  seasons,  but  of  every-day  life.  In  this  con- 
ception of  religion  he  was  greatly  strengthened  by  the  position 
of  one  who  was,  perhaps  more  than  any  other,  his  ideal, 
Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby,  to  whom  he  so  often  referred  and 
whom  he  called,  "the  most  earnest  and  intrepid  thinker 
upon  great  questions  in  modern  times."  In  a  lecture  upon 
Dr.  Arnold  he  refers  with  strong  approbation  to  "the 
warmth  and  urgency  with  which  Arnold  insisted  that  religion 

i  Sermon.     ' '  Forgetting  the  Things  Behind . " 


28  THE   VERY   ELECT 

is  not  something  which  we  can  separate  from  the  rest  of  life 
and  do,  or  do  up,  at  particular  times  and  places,  or  do  by 
proxy.  It  is  the  spirit  in  which  we  do  everything."  At 
a  time  before  the  freer  and  saner  conception  of  religious  life 
had  become  general  my  father  was  one  of  those  who  led  the 
way  quietly  and  unostentatiously  into  the  newer  order.  His 
children  will  not  forget  how  in  their  younger  years  he  tried 
to  make  Sunday  for  them  not  a  day  of  repression  and  gloom 
but  the  best  day  of  the  week.  Every  Sunday  after  dinner 
there  was  a  rush  to  see  what  was  " behind  the  lounge"  in  the 
study  which  he  had  brought  to  sweeten  the  afternoon  for  us; 
and  when  he  came  with  his  well-chosen  book  to  read  to  us 
there  were  memorable  hours  of  comradeship.  He  made 
The  Pilgrim's  Progress  a  beloved  book  to  us,  though  we 
always  begged  him  to  skip  when  he  came  to  the  oft  recurring 
words,  "Then  I  saw  in  my  dream  that  they  entered  into 
discourse." 

Breadth  and  grasp  of  mind,  sound  and  discriminating 
judgment,  active  and  courageous  faith — how  vitally  these 
qualities  entered  into  all  his  aims  and  work  as  a  man,  as  well 
as  a  teacher  and  administrator!  They  marked  the  opening 
of  his  administration  and  distinguished  its  crowning  act 
in  taking  the  necessary  steps  for  the  completion  of  the  endow- 
ment fund.  Although  it  was  in  his  capacity  as  an  adminis- 
trator that  he  was  seen  most  by  the  public,  especially  in  the 
later  years  of  his  life,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  he  con- 
tinued by  choice  a  teacher  to  the  very  last.  He  was  a  teacher- 
president.  Called  from  the  sheepcote  of  a  schoolmastership 
to  be  an  educational  leader  and  administrator,  he  kept  the 
virtues  and  characteristics  of  that  calling  which,  though 
lowly,  he  held  in  the  highest  esteem  and  honor.  The  joy 
and  reward  of  true  teaching  is  finely  described  in  an  address 
given  by  him,  evidently  while  yet  the  glow  of  his  profession 
was  upon  him,  from  which  a  brief  extract  may  fittingly  be 
taken:  "The  good  teacher  never  loses  the  admiration  of 


IDEALS  AND  AIMS  29 

those  who  like  him  and  those  who  dislike  him.  There  is 
nothing  more  charming,  there  are  few  things  in  life  more 
satisfying,  than  the  upturned  glances  of  pupils  to  the  face 
of  an  admired  teacher.  They  seem  to  hang  on  his  lips  as 
if  every  word  were  too  precious  to  be  lost.  Common  things 
said  by  him  sound  to  them  like  oracles.  There  is  no  homage 
so  flattering  as  this,  no  power  so  sweet  to  the  possessor  of  it. 
The  pedagogue's  chair  after  all  is  the  real  throne;  it  rules 
not  by  force  over  reluctant  subjects;  it  sways  young  minds 
and  hearts  capable  of  generous  enthusiasm.  This  may  seem 
to  explain  why  the  Samuel  Taylors,  the  Tayler  Lewises, 
keep  on  teaching  to  the  end  and  die  in  the  harness.  The 
admiration  of  pupils,  the  frank  and  affectionate  homage  of 
the  class-room,  has  become  essential  to  their  existence.  The 
aroma  of  life  is  gone  with  that.  If  it  is  now  asked  how  does 
the  teacher  manage  to  inspire  this  admiration,  the  >answer 
is  that  it  is  not  by  management  at  all.  It  comes  largely 
from  the  admiration  the  teacher  has  for  his  pupils.  There 
must  be,  in  the  good  sense  of  the  phrase,  a  mutual  admiration. 
That  man  or  woman  has  in  him  or  her  no  capability  for 
teaching  who  does  not  admire,  with  absorbing  and  boundless 
admiration,  the  wonderful  being  with  whom  they  have  to  do. 
Men  get  enthusiastic  by  study  of  inanimate  and  immaterial 
objects — rocks,  plants,  animals,  stars;  why  should  they  not 
become  so  in  a  ktudy  a  thousand  times  more  interesting 
and  wonderful  than  any  of  them,  the  study  of  a  human  soul 
in  the  spring-time  of  its  'eternal  year,  a  being  that  enfolds 
within  itself  infinite  capabilities  waiting  for  the  warm  breath 
of  inspiration  from  another  living  soul  to  expand  it  into 
fairest  bloom." 

At  the  memorial  service  in  honor  of  his  pupil  and  friend, 
Reverend  Austin  Hazen,  after  quoting  the  words  of  the 
Scotchman  to  his  friends  who  were  commiserating  with  him 
on  his  approaching  end;  "Na,  Na,  Death  is  a  grand  ordina- 
tion, "  President  Buckham  said:  "As  the  night  brings  out 


30  THE  VERY  ELECT 

the  stars,  as  but  for  the  night  we  should  never  see  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  heavens,  so  death  brings  out  to  us,  brings  to 
our  astonished  and  admiring  gaze,  virtues  in  our  friend, 
graces,  lovelinesses,  of  which  before  we  had  been  but  dimly, 
if  at  all  conscious."  So  it  has  been  with  himself,  as  the 
warm  and  heartfelt  tributes  attest. 

Other  words  of  his  spoken  in  honor  of  his  colleague  and 
comrade  for  so  many  years,  Professor  Henry  A.  P.  Torrey, 
are  equally  fitting  if  applied  to  himself:  "I  cannot  say  that 
he  is  'dead',  for  one  who  has  been  for  a  whole  generation  a 
part  of  the  life  of  an  institution  does  not  die  out  of  it  in  an 
hour,  or  a  year,  or  in  many  years.  The  wise  and  faithful 
and  loving  teachers  who  in  the  century  of  its  history  have 
made  this  institution  what  it  has  been  and  is — are  they  'no 
more'? — have  they  'passed  away'?  What  we  call  death  has 
but  added  one  more  to  the  number  of  those  who  live,  and 
will  ever  live,  in  the  memory  and  in  the  lives  of  the  past  and 
the  present  and  the  future  sons  and  daughters  of  the 
University. " 

J.  W.  B. 


ADDRESSES  AND  LECTURES 


THE  VERY  ELECT 

AN  ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME  :  SEPTEMBER,  1907 

AN  ENGLISH  writer,  unknown  to  fame,  quoted  for  us  by 
Quiller-Couch,  sets  before  us  a  charming  vision  of  the  school- 
going  children  of  the  world : 

"All  over  the  world,"  he  says,  "the  children  are  trooping  to  school. 
The  great  Globe  swings  round  out  of  the  dark  into  the  sun.  There  is 
always  morning  somewhere,  and  forever,  in  this  shifting  region  of  the  morn- 
ing light,  we  may  see  the  little  ones  afoot;  in  country  lanes  and  rustic 
villages;  on  lonely  moorlands,  on  the  hillsides,  in  the  woods,  on  the 
stepping-stones  that  cross  the  brook  in  the  glen;  along  the  seacliffs,  and 
on  the  wet  ribbed  sands;  trespassing  on  the  railway  lines,  making  short 
cuts  through  the  corn,  sitting  in  ferry-boats;  in  the  crowded  streets  of 
smoky  cities,  in  small  rocky  islands,  in  places  far  inland  where  the  sea  is 
known  only  as  a  strange  tradition.  The  morning-side  of  the  planet  is 
alive  with  them:  one  hears  their  pattering  footsteps  everywhere.  And 
as  the  vast  continents  sweep  eastering  out  of  the  high  shadow  which 
reaches  beyond  the  moon,  and  as  new  nations  with  their  cities  and  vil- 
lages, their  fields,  woods,  mountains,  and  sea-shores,  rise  up  into  the 
morning-side;  lo  !  fresh  troops  and  still  fresh  troops,  and  yet  again  fresh 
troops,  of  these  small  school-going  children  of  the  dawn." 

If  one  had  the  fine  imagination  of  this  English  seer,  one 
might  follow  these  myriads  of  children  as  they  fall  away  into 
smaller  and  smaller  groups,  to  be  numbered  by  thousands, 
by  hundreds,  by  scores,  till  they  dwindle  to  the  comparatively 
few  who  finally  reach  the  college  or  the  university.  For  even 
in  our  day  of  unlimited  collegiate  opportunity,  the  number 
of  youths  resorting  to  institutions  of  higher  learning  is  small 
compared  with  the  number  of  young  persons  of  what  we  may 
call  collegiate  age.  And  yet,  few  comparatively  as  they  are, 
they,  like  the  children  described  by  our  Poet,  come  from  all 
imaginable  localities,  and  origins,  and  conditions.  The  time 
3  33 


34  THE  VERY  ELECT 

is  past,  if  it  ever  was,  when  the  higher  learning  was  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  wealth  and  leisure.  I  say,  if  this  ever  was,  because 
history  records  no  time  when  the  poor  boy  of  genius  has  not 
worked  his  way  from  the  farm,  and  the  forge,  and  even  from 
the  slave's  cabin,  to  high  positions  in  science  and  art  and  litera- 
ture. One  argument  which  always  confronts,  and  sometimes 
estops,  collegiate  endowments,  is  that  genius  does  not  need 
them,  and  mediocrity  does  not  requite  them.  But  while  in 
times  past  collegiate  opportunity  has  always  been  possible 
though  difficult,  it  is  now  as  easy  as  it  is  safe  to  make  it  with- 
out cheapening  learning  and  pauperizing  the  recipients  of 
public  and  private  bounty.  But  wealth  certainly  cannot  be 
charged,  in  our  day,  with  arrogating  to  itself  the  distinction 
which  attends  the  higher  education.  The  sons  and  daughters 
of  the  rich  are  not  found  in  great  numbers  in  our  colleges  and 
universities — excluded,  perhaps,  by  a  kind  of  providential 
fair  play  which  forbids  the  too  great  accumulation  of  benefits 
upon  any  one  group  of  society.  But  if  wealth  does  not,  what 
does,  determine  who  shall  have  the  high  privilege  and  the 
choice  distinction  of  a  university  career?  Out  of  these  millions 
of  children  whom  the  poet  sees  in  the  morning  light  wending 
their  way  to  school,  who,  or  what,  makes  selection  of  that 
fractional  number  of  them  who,  in  their  eighteenth  year, 
or  thereabouts,  on  some  morning  in  September,  or  October, 
cross  the  threshold  of  some  college  or  university  as  enrolled 
members  of  it? 

When  we  look  into  this  question  carefully,  we  find  going  on 
a  process,  more  or  less  automatic,  selective,  intelligent,  not 
unerring  but  in  the  main  effective,  for  bringing,  in  the  interest 
of  society  in  general,  out  of  the  mass  of  capable  young  men 
and  women,  those  who  are  to  receive,  and  to  use  for  the  good 
of  all,  the  potencies  which  are  conferred  by  a  liberal  education. 
Not  to  attempt  to  follow  up  the  vision  of  our  poet  and  see  this 
influence  working  itself  out  in  the  wide  world,  let  us  watch 
its  operation  in  that  part  of  the  world  in  which  we  are  most 


ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME  35 

concerned,  and  which  we  know  best.  If  college  students  are 
in  respect  to  the  privileges  conferred  by  education,  "The  Very 
Elect,"  let  us  ask  on  what  principle  of  election  their  presence 
at  the  opening  of  their  college  career  can  be  accounted  for. 
The  question  of  their  perseverance  we  will  reserve  for  another 
occasion.  For  the  present,  let  us  ask,  Where,  in  our  own 
country,  do  students  come  from  to  college? — Why  do  they 
come  to  college? — What  are  they  doing  in  college? 

It  becomes  necessary  at  this  point,  though  not  by  any 
means  a  pleasant  duty,  to  clear  the  ground  by  a  process  like 
what  in  algebra  we  call  "elimination" — getting  rid  of  negli- 
gible quantities.  There  is  always  in  college  a  certain  small 
number  of  students  whom  in  lieu  of  a  harsher  name  we  will 
call  "the  Unaccountables " — those  who  assume  the  role  of 
matriculants  for  no  good  and  sufficient  reasons — for  no  better 
reason,  perhaps,  than  to  escape  hard  work  elsewhere,  or  to 
have  "a  jolly  good  time,"  or  to  play  ball,  or  to  get  into  a 
fraternity,  or  because  their  parents  did  not  know  what  else 
to  do  with  them.  These  are  not  proper  college  material. 
They  have  for  the  time  being  missed  their  way  in  life.  The 
pertinent  question  about  them  is  the  question  of  the  French 
comedy:  Que  diable  allaitent  Us  faire  dans  cette  galeref 
But  the  strange  thing,  the  pathetic  thing,  in  some  of  these 
cases,  is  that  these  young  fellows  will  let  their  parents  sacri- 
fice for  them;  they  will  bear  hardships  themselves,  do  irksome 
chores,  and  live  on  scanty  fare;  they  will  suffer  the  humiliation 
of  going  into  debt  to  tradespeople  and  to  the  poor  women 
who  do  their  washing  and  mend  their  stockings;  they  will 
accept  gratuities  meant  for  the  encouragement  of  honest 
effort;  they  will  be  the  shirks  and  butts  and  spoons  of  their 
classes,  the  plague  of  their  instructors,  the  suppliant  waiters 
on  the  indulgence  of  committees,  and  all  for  what? — for  a 
chance  to  avoid  work  laboriously,  to  escape  knowledge  cun- 
ningly, to  elude  opportunity  successfully — for  nothing  gained 
that  in  after  life  will  give  them  any  help  or  satisfaction.  To 


36  THE  VERY  ELECT 

these,  and  such  as  these,  the  message  of  the  university — a 
not  unkind  message — would  that  it  could  reach  them  in  time 
to  prevent  mistake  and  waste — is,  "if  you  have  not  a  great 
longing  for  what  the  university  has  to  give,  and  are  not  willing 
to  pay  the  heavy  price  in  faithful  work  by  which  alone  it  can 
be  secured,  don't  come;  if  you  have  come,  and  have  found  that 
you  have  made  a  mistake;  if  you  have  no  heart  in  your  work, 
no  joy  in  doing  it;  if  it  is  all  mere  drudgery,  to  be  loathed,  and 
shirked  and  shammed,  then  with  our  good-will  and  blessing, 
go  where  talents  and  merits  of  the  non-collegiate  order — for 
such  there  are,  and  we  do  not  doubt  you  have  them — will 
find  more  satisfying  employment  and  more  congenial  compan- 
ionship." 

Turning  our  thoughts  now  to  the  real  members  of  the  uni- 
versity body — to  those  who  have  put  not  merely  their  names 
upon  its  books  but  their  hearts  into  its  life — we  find  that  a 
large  number  of  them,  up  to  recent  times  the  largest  number, 
have  come  from  what  has  been  called  "The  Academic  Caste" 
in  American  society,  and  have  become  college  students  mainly 
because  they  have  inherited  the  traditions  of  this  caste. 
By  this  expression  is  meant  that  group  of  society  which  main- 
tains intellectual  standards  of  thinking  and  living.  This 
element  has  always  been  relatively  large  in  our  country, 
especially  in  New  England.  The  early  settlers  were  of  a  con- 
spicuously intellectual,  and  we  may  say,  academic  strain. 
During  the  first  century  of  New  England  history  the  proportion 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  graduates  was  much  larger  here 
than  in  the  Mother  Country,  and  this  preponderance  of  highly 
trained  men  in  the  primitive  stock  has  given  character  to 
our  whole  subsequent  social  life.  Leaving  out  whatever  may 
be  invidious  and  un-American  in  the  term,  "The  Academic 
Caste,"  we  may  use  it  to  describe  the  temper  and  attitude 
of  what  has  been  till  recently  the  leading  class  in  our  society, 
the  sturdy  men  and  capable  women  who  do  the  plain  work 
of  the  world  with  superior  intelligence;  who  read  good  liter- 


ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME  37 

ature;  who  take  a  patriotic  interest  in  public  affairs;  who 
require  and  relish  intellectual  preaching;  whose  conversation 
glides  easily  into  themes  of  history  and  philosophy  and  theol- 
ogy; the  class  which  has  maintained  academies  and  high 
schools,  and  founded  universities  and  colleges.  This  class 
has  its  representatives  in  almost  all  the  localities  and  habitats 
indicated  by  our  poet  of  the  schools — as  many  in  the  country 
as  in  the  city,  on  the  farms  as  in  the  urban  homes.  In  all  these 
homes,  the  avocations,  the  relaxations,  the  embellishments, 
of  life,  are,  as  in  all  best  homes,  social,  intellectual,  religious. 
Amid  manifold  hardships,  much  straitness,  res  angustce, 
—high  ideals  of  living  are  maintained.  If  one  of  the  boys 
must  stay  at  home  and  keep  up  the  homestead  farm;  if  one 
may  seek  a  larger  fortune  in  the  West;  one  at  least  must  go 
to  college  and  keep  unbroken  the  tie  which  connects  the  family 
with  the  higher  life  of  the  intellect  and  the  spirit.  Down  to 
the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  these  families  largely  supplied  the 
colleges  with  their  students.  From  the  parsonages,  the  better 
farms,  the  families  of  village  tradesmen,  artisans,  lawyers,  and 
doctors,  the  boys  found  their  way,  and  were  helped  by  the 
minister,  the  schoolmaster  and  the  country  squire  to  find  their 
way,  to  the  colleges.  In  the  old  Webster's  Spelling  Book, 
in  which  all  alike  were  schooled,  the  Temple  of  Knowledge 
on  the  first  page  was  always  inviting  ingenuous  youths  to 
come  up  to  the  heights  on  which  it  stood,  and  a  goodly  number 
of  them  were  continuously  answering  to  the  call.  The  pur- 
poses for  which  students  came  to  college  were  not  always — 
perhaps  not  often — definitely  fixed  in  their  minds.  A  certain 
few  distinctly  proposed  the  ministry,  but  the  majority  came 
to  get  a  liberal  education  and  what  it  might  lead  to.  They 
all  took  the  classical  course,  for  there  was  no  other.  It  would 
be  more  correct  to  say  that  the  college  course  was  what  it  was, 
because  what  was  wanted  of  it  was  a  liberal  in  distinction  from 
a  professional  or  technical  education. 

In  describing  the  "Academic  Caste,"  and  the  relations  of 


38  THE  VERY  ELECT 

its  constituency  to  the  college,  I  have  half-consciously  glided 
into  the  past  tense,  as  though  it  were  obsolete,  or  obsolescent. 
But  I  believe  that  it  still  survives,  though  not,  I  fear,  with  the 
same  relative  vigor  and  influence.  I  speak  regretfully  of  its 
possible  decadence,  because  it,  more  than  any  other  agency 
which  is  visible,  is  our  reliance  for  conserving,  amid  an  en- 
croaching materialism,  the  spirituality  which  has  thus  far 
characterized  our  New  England  Civilization.  But  if  the  signs 
do  not  mislead  us,  we  are  permitted  to  hope,  not  only  for 
its  survival,  but  for  that  reassertion  of  its  old-time  primacy 
which  will  make  it  the  efficient  ally  we  are  all  looking  for  in 
the  task  of  revivifying  the  humanistic  side  of  university  disci- 
pline. 

I  see  another  troop  of  youths  headed  toward  the  university 
under  a  motive  which  is  vague  to  some  of  them,  but  quite 
definite  to  others,  a  yearning  for  an  enlargement  of  life.  Some 
in  the  formative  stage  of  life  are  content  to  stay  where  they 
were  born.  To  venture  beyond  their  native  habitat  would 
be  irksome  to  them.  The  "cool,  sequestered  vale  of  life" 
is  to  them  the  ideal  home:  outside  of  it  is  to  them  only  "the 
madding  crowd."  Our  feeling  toward  them  is  one  partly 
of  envy — for  they  escape  many  of  the  trials  and  sorrows  of 
the  larger  life — one  wholly  of  approval,  for  the  world  needs 
them  and  could  not  do  without  them  just  where  they  are. 
But  in  the  breasts  of  others  there  is  a  stirring  of  unrest,  a 
beating  against  the  bars,  a  sense  of  suffocation — a  feeling 
which  if  expressed  in  words  would  say:  "I  know  all  there 
is  in  this  way  of  life.  It  is  a  good  life  for  those  who  love  it — 
and  it  is  a  lovable  life.  It  affords  opportunities  for  honest 
and  faithful  work,  for  pleasant  friendships  and  loves,  for  small 
but  useful  services  in  neighborhood,  and  town,  and  church. 
It  will  be  a  good  life  to  come  back  to,  sometime.  But  its 
radius  is  small — its  horizon  is  near — and  there  is  not  enough 
of  it  to  satisfy."  This  feeling  was  rather  bluntly  expressed 
by  an  old-time  Vermonter,  who,  driving  with  a  friend  through 


ADDRESS   OF  WELCOME  39 

one  of  the  beautiful  scenes  of  the  Lamoille  Valley,  exclaimed, 
"How  lovely  all  this  is,  and  how  glad  I  am  that  I  am  out  of 
it!"  Acting  under  this  impulse  some  move  to  new  lands, 
some  resort  to  the  city,  and  some  go  to  college.  In  former 
times  the  old  county  academy,  in  our  day  the  high  school,  is  a 
perpetual  persuader  to  this  last  choice.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  this  motive  is  a  more  vital  one  than  that  which 
works  in  the  Academic  Caste.  It  is  both  a  vis  a  tergo  and  a 
vis  ab  ante.  It  impels  by  a  feeling  of  unrest:  it  draws  by  a 
sense  of  mystery.  The  legends  of  the  university,  wafted  in 
tradition  and  song  to  the  boy  in  the  remote  valley,  whisper 
to  him  of  a  possibility  made  glorious  with  hope.  Many  a 
man  in  after  life  will  say  to  himself:  "The  gladdest  day  I 
have  ever  known  in  my  life  was  the  day  on  which  I  saw  myself 
a  member  of  college,  for  on  that  day  I  saw  a  new  life  opening 
before  me,  and  though  I  knew  little  of  what  the  intellectual 
life  means,  I  had  a  boundless  faith  in  its  capabilities,  and  I 
believed  that  it  had  in  store  for  me  that  which  would  repay 
me  a  thousand  fold  for  the  sacrifice  made  by  me  and  for  me 
in  order  that  I  might  avail  myself  of  its  benefits." 

This  impulse  to  break  one's  way  into  a  fuller  life  is  in  every 
way  commendable,  if  only  it  is  well-founded — that  is,  if  it 
has  a  basis  of  ability,  and  endurance,  and  integrity.  It  will 
not  always  realize  its  dream.  Ability  may  have  been  over- 
estimated :  endurance  may  give  out  before  the  crucial  strain  is 
passed:  worst  of  all,  integrity  may  yield  to  the  pressure  of 
temptation.  Some  will  come  back  to  the  farm,  the  shop, 
the  small  economies  of  the  village,  happier,  perhaps,  and  saner, 
for  their  short  experience  of  the  larger  world — perhaps  un- 
happier  because  they  have  learned  to  look  with  envy  and 
bitterness  on  those  who  have  left  them  behind.  But  on  the 
whole  these  failures  are  surprisingly  few.  I  give  it  as  the  testi- 
mony of  one  who  has  watched  for  a  long  time  the  working 
out  of  the  scholarly  motive  in  young  lives,  that  the  proportion 
of  those  who  get  creditably  through  college,  or  even  through 


40  THE  VERY  ELECT 

two  or  three  years  of  college,  and  then  fail  of  success  as  meas- 
ured by  any  reasonable  standard,  is  very  small,  so  small  as 
to  create  the  presumption  that  a  young  man  of  fair  ability 
and  good  staying  power  may  be  sure  of  realizing  a  good  part 
of  what  his  young  dream  of  a  career  in  and  after  college  prom- 
ised to  him. 

Included  within  this  general  aspiration  for  ah  enlarged  life, 
is  one  form  of  it  which  specially  touches  the  sex  to  whom  the 
opportunities  of  a  liberal  education  have  come  late,  but  who 
seem  to  be  as  eager  to  share  its  benefits  as  the  other  sex — I 
mean  the  social  opportunities  which  such  an  education  offers. 
If  Matthew  Arnold  is  right  in  saying  that  conduct  is  three- 
fourths  of  life,  we  may  add  that  fully  half  of  conduct  is  social 
conduct — that  a  large  part  of  life's  enjoyment  is  social  enjoy- 
ment, and  a  large  part  of  the  deprivations  most  keenly  felt 
are  social  deprivations.  When  Mr.  Titmouse  gazes  enviously 
on  the  high-bloods  disporting  themselves  at  Hyde  Park  Corner 
on  a  Sunday  afternoon  and  "  curses  the  whole  concern ;" 
when  Browning  shows  us  a  woman  who  would  sacrifice  her 
dearest  friend  for  an  invitation  to  the  Court  Ball  one  night; 
this  represents  only  the  extreme  and  the  perversion  of  that 
social  sensitiveness  and  social  pride  which  is  human  and  uni- 
versal. The  good  and  right  side  of  this  feeling  is  the  desire 
for  social  recognition  and  fellowship  among  cultivated,  re- 
fined, well-mannered  people — among  those  who  care  for  the 
higher  things  in  life,  and  who  know  how  to  use  both  the  solid 
principles  and  the  graceful  amenities  of  life  so  as  to  get  some 
of  its  sweetness  and  charm.  To  this  social  sphere  the  higher 
education  gives  the  entree,  not  merely  for  its  own  sake,  but  by 
reason  of  other  qualifications  with  which  it  is  naturally  as- 
sociated; and  the  appreciation  of  this  fact  brings,  and  with 
good  reason,  many  of  both  sexes,  and  of  one  sex  in  particular, 
to  college. 

Here  we  must  pause  for  a  moment  to  ask  how  much  consid- 
eration ought  to  be  given  to  a  charge  often  brought  against 


ADDRESS   OF   WELCOME  41 

this  aspect  of  the  higher  education,  to  the  effect  that  it  entices 
youths  away  from  the  great  fundamental  callings  where  they 
are  most  needed.  The  complaint  comes  most  often  and  most 
loudly  from  those  who  assume  to  speak  for  the  interests  of 
agriculture.  To  educate  boys  and  girls  "  away  from  the  farm," 
they  tell  us,  is  to  withdraw  support  from  that  interest  which  is 
the  basis  of  all  prosperity.  To  this  we  make  two  replies.  First, 
that  one  main  and  indispensable  office  of  the  farm  is,  to  breed 
men  for  the  other  professions — for  the  highest  and  most  im- 
portant places  in  them — and  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  college 
to  seek  them  out  hi  the  farm  and  educate  them  away  from  the 
farm — if  we  must  use  the  expression — into  the  offices  which 
need  them  and  would  suffer,  and  all  society  with  them,  if  they 
are  not  forthcoming.  And  secondly,  instead  of  withholding 
the  higher  education  from  the  sons  of  the  farm  for  fear  of 
losing  them,  as  this  logic  requires  us  to  do,  we  will  so  educate 
the  farm,  so  educate  farm  life,  so  liberalize  and  intellectualize 
it,  that  it  will  have  a  fair  and  equal  chance,  in  competition 
with  other  professions,  to  attract  and  retain  within  its  ranks 
bright  boys  and  progressive  men. 

There  remains  a  class,  an  increasing  class  in  our  times,  whom 
I  shall  call,  in  order  to  have  a  short  name  for  them,  "The 
Zeitgeisters," — young  men  who  are  the  products  and  exemplars 
of  the  age,  in  whose  pulses  beats  the  spirit  of  the  times,  whose 
sympathies  are  not  with  the  past  but  with  the  present  and  the 
future.  These  young  men  act  in  accordance  with  a  wisdom 
of  which  they  may  or  may  not  be  altogether  conscious,  in 
coming  to  a  university  for  what  is  not  in  itself  a  proper  uni- 
versity function,  but  rather  that  of  a  technical  school.  But 
with  or  without  knowing  it  they  come  to  the  university  to  be 
not  merely  apprenticed  but  educated,  to  come  under  the  in- 
fluence of  ideas,  to  be  sobered  into  reflection,  and  steadied 
to  continuity  of  purpose — and  meanwhile,  though  not  with 
the  finality  they  may  imagine,  to  get  the  scientific  and  tech- 
nical equipment  which  will  fit  them  for  immediate  efficiency 


42  THE  VERY  ELECT 

in  a  chosen  calling.  In  times  quite  near  the  present,  these 
young  men  have  been  told — they  are  even  now  sometimes 
told  by  some  belated  adviser — that  a  college  career  is  for  them 
a  mistake,  that  experience  with  the  rod  and  chain,  or  in  the 
works,  is  better  than  books  and  laboratories.  But  the  large 
managers  and  promoters  are  silencing  this  talk  by  ignoring 
it  and  calling  for  college-bred  men,  calling  for  them  indeed 
in  numbers  far  beyond  what  the  colleges  can  supply.  These 
students  have  one  advantage  over  others  in  that  they  have  a 
pressing  inducement  to  do  their  very  best  in  order  to  be  able 
to  meet  the  sharp  competition  which  faces  them  at  the  very 
outset  of  their  professional  career  and  all  through  it.  They 
have  one  disadvantage — the  narrow,  and,  unless  they  are  on 
their  guard,  the  narrowing  views  of  collegiate  training  and  of 
post-collegiate  mental  furnishing,  which  technical  specialism 
naturally  induces.  On  their  side  these  students  contribute 
to  the  general  life  of  the  university  a  strenuous  and  realistic 
enterprise,  showing  itself  in  a  willingness  to  work  more  hours 
a  week  than  other  students,  and  on  the  other  hand  they  get,  if 
they  know  their  opportunity,  through  participation  in  the 
humanistic  spirit  which  is  dominant  in  every  true  university, 
some  degree  of  breadth  and  culture,  which  differentiates  them 
from  mere  technical  experts.  These  are  the  men  who  in  the 
future  will  be  the  masters  of  manufacturing,  transportation, 
commerce  and  finance;  the  great  producers,  managers,  and 
inventors  in  agriculture;  our  foreign  consuls,  presidents  of 
boards  of  trade  and  of  insurance  companies;  organizers  of 
the  coming  industrial  unions  based  on  the  principle  of  co-opera- 
tive good-will;  our  leaders  in  a  prosperity  which  will  not  be 
subject  to  the  caprices  of  party  leaders  and  the  intrigues  of 
demagogues.  These  are  the  men  all  of  whom  will  have  the 
due  appreciation  of  benefits  received,  and  some  of  whom  will, 
we  trust,  have  the  business  profits,  untainted  by  envy  and  un- 
harmed by  either  mob  or  government  spoliation,  out  of  which 
will  come  benefactions  to  the  institutions  which,  though  poor, 
have  made  them  and  many  rich. 


ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME  43 

And  so,  like  the  writer  quoted  at  the  outset,  who  saw  in 
vision  the  world's  children  flocking  to  school  in  the  morning 
light,  we  may  see,  on  this  mid-autumn  morning,  the  elect 
from  this  vast  number,  few  and  yet  numbered  by  many  thou- 
sands, from  city  and  country;  from  hamlet  and  farm;  from  hill- 
side and  river-side  and  sea-side;  from  homes  of  luxury  and 
culture,  from  homes  of  homely  thrift  and  intelligence  and 
piety;  young  men  and  maidens  representing  the  various  classes 
of  our  great  pupilary  constituency,  trooping  to  the  four  hun- 
dred or  five  hundred  institutions  of  higher  learning  in  our  land. 
They  will  all  be  welcomed,  as  we  welcome  you  and  each  other 
here  today,  without  prejudice  as  to  the  environment  from 
which  they  have  come,  or  the  objects  they  have  in  view,  pro- 
vided only  that  they  have  had  the  antecedents  and  bring  the 
qualifications,  intellectual  and  personal,  which  make  them  fit 
to  be  members  of  a  Very  Elect  Community.  As  I  have  had 
occasion  to  say  many  times  before,  the  college  men  and  women 
of  our  country  come  nearest  to  being  an  aristocracy  of  any 
we  have,  or  are  likely  ever  to  have.  They  have  the  self-re- 
spect, the  consciousness  of  privilege,  and  the  sense  of  obligation, 
which  are  the  marks  of  a  true  aristocracy.  At  the  same  time 
a  college  community  is  democratic  to  the  last  degree.  Short 
shrift  would  be  the  fate  of  any  member  of  it  who  should  set 
up  a  claim  to  superiority  on  the  strength  of  his  money,  or  his 
family  connection,  or  any  other  non-personal  distinction. 
One  thing  the  college  is  providentially  called  to  do,  is  to  show 
to  the  world  that  the  Very  Elect  are  the  most  democratic  of 
all.  Leadership  there  will  be,  and  must  be,  but  it  will  be  the 
leadership  of  personal  qualities,  of  intellectual  gifts,  of  moral 
force,  of  persuasive  personality,  of  contagious  good-fellow- 
ship— of  those  qualities  which  everywhere  and  of  right  gain 
mastery  over  men.  Happy,  as  Virgil  said  of  husbandmen, 
may  we  say  of  a  college  family  like  ours,  happy  if  we  but  know 
our  happiness!  Let  us  all  endeavor  to  know  it,  and  to  help 
each  other  to  realize  it  to  the  utmost! 


COLLEGE  IDEALS  IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE 
ADDKESS  AT  VASSAR  COLLEGE  ON  FOUNDER'S  DAY,  1891 

I  SUPPOSE  that  never  before  or  after  do  any  of  us  have  quite 
so  pure  and  lofty  a  purpose  in  life  as  we  have  just  as  we  come 
to  the  close  of  a  college  career,  just  when  the  college  has  done 
its  perfect  work  in  us,  and  before  the  world  has  had  time  to 
take  off  its  bloom.  I  do  not  refer  merely  to  those  pensive 
musings,  half-pleasing,  half-melancholy,  made  up  of  regrets 
for  youthful  follies,  high  hopes  and  good  resolutions  for  the 
future,  and  perhaps  love's  young  dream, — not  to  these  merely, 
though  they  are  no  bad  signs  for  the  future;  but  rather  to  the 
young  graduates'  philosophy  of  life,  their  estimate  of  men 
and  things,  their  aims  and  ambitions.  A  cynic  may  find  in 
all  this  only  matter  for  a  smile  at  youthful  conceit.  But  in 
this  retrospect  and  this  outlook  and  in  the  thoughts  and 
purposes  then  and  there  prompted  in  the  young  mind  and 
heart,  a  kindly  observer  will  see  much  which  he  would  wish 
they  might  carry  with  them  into  all  their  future.  I  say  into 
all  their  future — not  merely  for  a  few  months  while  school- 
girl friendships  last — not  merely  for  a  few  years  "  by  the  vision 
splendid,  on  their  way  attended,"  like  Wordsworth's  growing 
boy,  until  "it  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day";  but  that 
having  once  had  the  college  vision  of  life,  they  should  never 
lose  it,  never  be  wholly  disillusioned,  never  grow  callous  to  the 
old  impressions,  but  carry  into  the  hard  work  and  the  dull 
routine  of  life,  such  memories  and  hopes,  such  ideas  and 
aspirations,  that  by  means  of  them,  they  shall  be  always 
different  and  always  better. 

And  here  I  pause  to  say  that  in  my  judgment  the  best  ser- 
vice a  college  can  render  to  a  young  man  and  a  young  woman 
is  to  give  them  this  true  and  lofty,  and  if  you  please,  this 

44 


COLLEGE  IDEALS   IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE      45 

romantic  conception  of  the  meaning  and  possibilities  of  life, 
and  this  high  and  noble  purpose  for  their  share  in  it,  and  that 
this  one  object  should  dominate  all  the  plans  and  methods  of 
collegiate  education.  A  young  man  does  not  go  to  college  to 
learn  ways  and  means.  A  young  woman  does  not  go  to  college 
to  learn  accomplishments.  Let  us  frankly  say  it — this  outfit 
for  life  which  ends  in  savoir  faire  for  one  sex  and  savoir  vivre 
for  the  other,  can  be  got  better  elsewhere  than  in  college. 
Not  for  this  are  colleges  endowed,  and  teachers  salaried,  and 
pupils  welcomed  and  tended  and  prayed  over,  not  for  this, 
not  for  any  mere  mercenary  or  professional  or  social  successes; 
but  just  for  this  baccalaureate  dream,  this  high  and  globing 
purpose  to  make  one's  own  life,  and  all  other  lives,  so  far  as 
possible,  true,  noble,  heroic.  And  how  shall  collegiate  edu- 
cation aim  to  accomplish  this?  By  putting  young  minds  and 
hearts,  in  their  receptive  and  formative  years,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  best  minds  and  the  noblest  characters  the  race  has 
produced,  its  great  reasoners,  its  great  poets  and  artists,  its 
great  jurists  and  statesmen,  its  great  heroes  and  heroines. 
They  shall  learn  Greek,  not  finally  that  they  may  be  able  to 
trace  the  optative  mood  through  all  its  subtle  distinctions,  but 
that  they  may  get  their  minds  into  sympathetic  communion 
with  Homer  and  Sophocles  and  Plato.  They  shall  study 
chemistry  on  the  one  hand  and  astronomy  on  the  other,  that 
they  may  appreciate  the  great  constructive  thoughts  which 
God  has  put  into  the  atom  and  into  the  universe.  If  one  goes 
through  college  and  brings  from  it  into  life  only  a  certain 
amount  of  language  and  physical  science  and  mathematics, 
and  no  great  principles  to  enlarge  and  ennoble  and  sweeten 
life,  better  would  it  have  been  to  remain  under  the  tutelage 
of  home,  and  useful  occupation,  and  social  reciprocities,  which 
never  fail  to  teach  some  human  lessons  of  responsibility  and 
service  and  charity. 

Now  may  one  whose  own  undergraduate  days  are  receding 
into  the  far  distance,  one  who  graduating  every  year  in  college 


46  THE  VERY  ELECT 

has  never  graduated  from  college,  may  a  man — who,  I  suppose, 
never  sees  the  ideal  as  clearly  or  surrenders  to  it  as  heartily 
as  a  woman — may  I  try  to  interpret  the  thoughts  which  make 
up  your  own  ideal  of  life,  and  by  giving  perhaps  a  little  needed 
severity  to  its  outline  and  a  little  sobriety  to  its  tone,  help 
you  to  make  it  realizable,  even  help  you  to  make  it  real? 

I.  If  I  were  to  ask  you  what  kind  of  life  is  most  distasteful 
and  repulsive  to  you,  and  what  most  of  all  things  you  are 
resolved  to  avoid,  you  would  all  agree  in  saying,  a  life  that  is 
commonplace,  humdrum,  paltry;  or  if  you  had  happened  to 
read  Matthew  Arnold,  you  would  sum  up  all  your  antipathies 
in  the  word  "philistine."  Not,  I  trust,  that  you  despise  the 
lowly  duties  of  life,  "the  trivial  round,  the  common  task," 
with  which  every  life  is  more  or  less  taken  up,  but  that  you 
protest  against  a  life  that  is  always  on  this  dead  level,  that 
never  ascends  into  the  upper  air  to  get  elevation,  prospect, 
and  inspiration,  to  put  into  the  daily  round.  With  your 
eager  eyes  you  look  over  the  life  of  ordinary  men  and  women, 
and  you  see  what  a  strong  tendency  there  is  in  everything  to 
gravitate  to  the  commonplace.  You  see  how  most  things  are 
measured  by  the  standard  of  a  low  common  sense,  and  how 
the  higher  things  which  can  be  appreciated  only  by  the 
uncommon  sense,  the  instructed  and  philosophic  sense,  are 
neglected:  how  the  fine  arts — any  finer  arts  than  cookery  and 
upholstering — have  to  struggle  for  an  existence;  how  the 
highest  poetry,  Tennyson's  and  Browning's,  is  both  praised 
and  laughed  at  more  than  read;  how  religion  itself,  parent 
and  nurse  of  all  ideals,  is  put  into  rigid  scholastic  moulds,  and 
robbed  of  all  vitality  and  grace.  You  see  that  while  there  are 
ten  whose  notion  of  life  is  to  be  snug  and  comfortable,  to  be  in 
a  eupeptic  and  adipose-forming  condition,  not  in  body  only 
but  in  intellect  and  heart,  there  is  but  one  who  cares  for  higher 
things  and  is  willing  to  toil  and  suffer  for  them,  and  that  that 
one  in  the  ten,  the  prophet  whose  voice  cries  in  the  wilderness, 
the  poet  who  lives  in  the  attic  and  communes  with  the  stars, 


COLLEGE  IDEALS  IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE       47 

the  one  woman  in  the  country  church  who  sympathizes  with 
St.  Paul's  wish  to  have  things  done  decently  and  in  order, — 
that  these  few  persons  are  really  doing  the  whole  work  of 
keeping  life  from  dropping  down  to  a  condition  in  which  it 
would  not  be  worth  living.  And  it  is  with  no  mere  selfish 
and  aesthetic  dilettantism  that  the  college  youth  looks  with 
disgust  on  this  style  of  life.  It  is  rather  with  a  kind  of  holy 
rage  that  life  should  be  robbed  of  its  possible  dignity  and  glory 
by  the  prevalence  of  low  conceptions  of  its  possibilities. 
For  in  truth  life  is  full  of  questions  to  which  the  ready  answer 
of  commonplace  minds  is  false  and  traitorous.  I  do  not 
deny  the  competency  of  the  average  mind  to  deal  with  the 
ordinary  experiences  of  life,  but  human  life  is  divine  as  well 
as  human.  It  has  heights  to  which  the  wayfaring  man  on  his 
two  feet  and  with  his  staff  cannot  climb.  It  has  depths  which 
the  plummet  of  common-sense  cannot  fathom.  There  are 
high  themes  which  are  within  the  range  of  minds  that  are 
gifted  but  are  without  training — the  poetry  of  Homer  and 
Burns  and  the  Bible,  the  art  of  the  Sistine  Madonna  and  the 
Angelus.  But  there  are  themes,  and  truths,  and  actions, 
which  can  be  apprehended  only  by  minds  that  have  both 
gifts  and  training: — the  logic  of  Paul  and  the  legal  reasoning 
of  Webster,  the  poetry  of  the  Divina  Commedia  and  of  In 
Memoriam,  the  art  of  Michael  Angelo.  And  unless  the  world 
is  well  supplied  with  minds  both  gifted  and  trained,  the  great 
profound  questions  of  life  will  get  shallow  and  false  answers, 
and  human  life  will  shrivel  into  paltry  and  mean  dimensions. 
What  would  have  been  the  fate  of  mankind  if  when  the  great 
questions  emerged — as  they  have  done  from  time  to  time  all 
through  the  world's  history — the  great-minded,  far-seeing 
men  had  not  come  forward  to  solve  them, — the  great  organ- 
izers and  statesmen,  the  Fathers  of  the  church,  the  epoch- 
making  men  in  industry  and  science  and  philosophy?  What 
will  befall  us  if  the  great,  pressing  questions  of  our  day,  social, 
economic,  religious,  are  left  to  be  settled  by  the  average 


48  THE  VERY  ELECT 

superficial  thinkers  and  writers  of  the  day?  to  be  settled,  that 
is,  by  rhetoric,  sophistry,  specious  fallacies,  by  those  arts  of 
the  demagogue  which  so  easily  lead  the  multitude  astray? 
When  it  is  said,  and  truly  said,  that  the  heart  of  the  great 
body  of  the  people  is  right,  and  that  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to 
trust  and  accept  their  verdict,  this  also  should  be  added,  that 
the  wisdom  of  the  people  consists  in  their  choosing  and  fol- 
lowing the  right  leader,  and  that  only  as  the  superior  minds 
instruct  them  patiently  and  earnestly  in  a  wisdom  which  is 
above  their  own,  are  they  capable  of  appreciating  and  choosing 
the  right  leadership. 

Now  the  college  ideal  of  life  gives  large  place  and  great 
power  to  the  gifted  and  trained  men  and  women  and  the  higher 
sense  which  they  bring  to  bear  on  the  great  questions  of  life. 
It  would  not  have  human  life  dominated  by  the  philosophy  of 
the  average  man.  It  says  to  that  philosophy,  There  are 
more  things  in  heaven  and  earth  than  you  have  dreamed  of. 
It  refuses  to  make  its  final  stand  upon  the  multiplication  table 
and  the  column  of  statistics.  It  appeals  from  these  low  terres- 
trial things  to  considerations  of  celestial  parallax,  and  right 
ascension,  and  the  asymptotes.  It  is  fond  of  paradox,  because 
paradox  is  the  antithesis  to  commonplace.  If  it  has  a  weak- 
ness it  is  a  passion  for  what  is  large,  grandiose,  cosmical. 
It  does  not  always  distinguish  what  is  original  from  what  is 
merely  bizarre,  what  is  nobly  free  from  what  is  absurdly 
capricious.  But  in  all  its  aspirations  and  in  all  its  vagaries, 
it  is  in  search  of  the  true,  the  ideal,  the  heroic  in  human  life. 
And  for  this,  this  inestimable,  this  unique  service  to  mankind 
and  to  its  earthly  and  its  heavenly  life,  let  us  thank  God  and 
the  colleges  in  which  through  his  spirit  these  great  thoughts 
are  begotten  and  fostered. 

II.  Again,  the  college  view  of  life  is  optimistic.  In  its 
bright  vocabulary  there  is  no  such  word  as  fail.  Like  Charity 
in  St.  Paul's  poem,  it  hopeth  all  things.  Experience  sees  too 
many  obstacles  in  the  path,  too  many  for  its  deficient  sense 


COLLEGE  IDEALS   IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE      49 

of  overcoming  power.  Youthful  idealism  has  such  a  bounding 
consciousness  of  vitality  that  it  makes  light  of  everything  in 
its  pathway.  Since  college  pranks  have  taken  on  a  more 
serious  character,  I  wonder  why  students  do  not  make  an 
auto  da  fe  of  Schopenhauer.  He  is  the  very  heresiarch  of 
pessimism,  the  college  diabolus,  the  accuser  of  the  brethren, 
and  of  the  whole  sorosis.  And  on  the  other  hand  they  should 
canonize  Darwin.  He  is  the  saint  of  optimism.  Evolution, 
be  it  true  or  false,  is  the  most  generous  theory  of  life  ever 
conceived.  I  cannot  think  of  its  origin  save  under  Christian 
influences.  It  upholds  the  law,  the  eternal  fact — I  see  not 
why  we  may  not  say  the  divine,  the  evangelic  fact — that  all 
things  necessarily  move  forward  to  something  better, — all 
things,  all  beings,  all  conditions,  all  life;  that  no  man 
liveth  to  himself  and  no  man  dieth  to  himself;  but  through 
all  God  is  providing  better  and  better  things  that  by  and 
by  all  may  be  perfect.  Beautiful  dreams,  some  one  may  say, 
but  destined  to  a  rude  awakening  when  the  youthful  soul 
confronts  the  hard  and  awful  facts  of  life.  Why  not 
dispel  these  school-day  visions  betimes?  Why  not  train 
the  character  for  contact  with  the  actual  life  of  wicked 
men  and  women?  Why  not  inure  these  lily  hands  to  weigh 
realities,  and  familiarize  these  virgin  minds  with  the  sin  and 
corruption  which  make  the  world  the  pandemonium  it  is? 
For  two  good  and  sufficient  reasons  among  many:  first,  because 
the  knowledge  of  evil  is  depressing,  while  the  knowledge  of 
good  is  stimulating.  "I  would  have  you,"  St.  Paul  said  to 
the  young  converts  at  Rome,  "wise  unto  that  which  is  good, 
but  simple  concerning  evil."  And  so  we  may  say,  I  would 
have  college  students  as  knowing  as  they  can  be  made  in  all 
the  good  things  of  life  and  history,  in  the  noble  and  beautiful 
deeds  of  men  and  women,  their  loves,  joys,  achievements, 
darings,  sacrifices,  heroisms,  but  very  sparingly  read  in  the 
tragic  events  of  life,  its  sins,  miseries,  agonies,  calamities. 
One  of  the  most  painful  spectacles  in  life  is  a  young  man  or 


50  THE  VERY   ELECT 

young  woman  prematurely  sobered,  wise  with  that  sad  wisdom 
which  comes  from  a  too  early  familiarity  with  evil.  And  the 
other  reason,  akin  to  this,  is  that  only  during  the  period  of 
illusions,  or  those  transcendental  realities  which  old  age 
calls  illusions,  do  human  beings  accomplish  anything  great. 
All  the  really  great  work  of  the  world  has  been  done  under  the 
inspiration  of  these  illusions.  By  the  force  of  an  illusion 
which  would  not  let  him  sleep  but  sent  him  restless  and  im- 
portunate to  all  the  courts  in  Europe,  Columbus  discovered 
America.  Nothing  more  than  illusions  and  impossibilities — 
and  pronounced  such  by  high  scientific  authority — were  ocean 
steamships  and  ocean  telegraphy,  till  they  became  facts. 
Livingston  and  Gordon  and  Stanley  were  led  on  their  perilous 
and  beneficent  ways  by  will  o'  the  wisps.  The  grandest  of 
all  illusions  is  Christianity  itself,  and  that  astounding  opti- 
mism of  its  founder  which  proclaimed  that  a  dying  Jew  on  a 
hill  in  Syria  would  draw  all  men  to  himself.  And  the  reason 
why.  an  ideal  optimism  is  practical  is  the  fact  that  it  has  vital- 
ity in  it,  true  soul  vitality.  Conventional  propriety,  timid 
accuracy,  dead  orthodoxy  never  move  anything.  "Do  you 
not  see,"  says  one  in  the  Inferno,  "that  that  one  moves  what 
he  touches?  So  do  not  the  feet  of  the  dead."  If  the  self- 
confident  enthusiasm  of  youth  is  sometimes  headed  wrong, 
that  matters  not;  the  thing  that  moves  has  power  to  correct 
aberrations.  It  is  the  dull  clumsy  thing  that  has  no  motive 
force  that  drifts  into  disaster.  Give  us  young  men  and  women 
who  having  seen  more  of  the  good  than  of  the  evil  in  the 
world;  who,  having  more  acquaintance  and  sympathy  with 
the  achievements  of  men  than  with  their  errors  and  follies, 
have  faith  in  God  and  men  and  the  future;  who  enter  life  with 
their  brows  lighted  up  with  hope;  who  when  the  true  and  right 
are  beset  with  difficulties  which  to  the  matter-of-fact  minds 
seem  insuperable,  will  say  with  the  splendid  audacity  of  the 
French  Calonne,  "if  it  is  possible,  it  is  already  done;  if  it  is 
impossible,  it  shall  be  done."  For  there  are  right  before  us 


COLLEGE  IDEALS   IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE      51 

now,  and  there  will  be  before  every  coming  generation,  things 
which  are  impossible,  and  which  yet  must  be  done,  and  will 
be  done;  and  they  will  be  done,  and  can  be  done  only  by  those 
who,  whether  they  themselves  come  out  of  college  or  not,  do 
really  bring  college  ideals,  college  optimism  into  practical 
life. 

And  here  permit  me  to  interpose  a  word  of  protest  against 
an  influence,  which,  I  fear,  is  intruding  itself  more  and  more 
into  our  modern  thought,  our  literature,  our  journalism,  our 
current  speech — an  influence  which  began  with  Cervantes, 
which  culminated  in  Voltaire,  and  which  has  reached  its  most 
degraded  form  in  what  is  now  known  as  realism, — that  spirit, 
I  mean,  which  opposes  itself  to  the  ideal,  which  attacks  all 
fine  sentiments  with  caricature  and  mockery  and  ridicule,  and 
takes  for  its  standard  the  actual  and  the  natural,  meaning  by 
that  the  lower  hemisphere  of  human  life,  in  which  the  common 
passions,  the  undisciplined  sentiments,  the  horizontal  and 
gravitating  forces  of  human  nature,  have  full  play.  If  any 
are  surprised  that  I  charge  Cervantes  with  leading  this  move- 
ment, let  me  ask  what  it  is  that  he  makes  ridiculous  in  the 
knight  of  the  sorrowful  countenance,  if  it  is  not  the  very  qual- 
ities which  make  knighthood  admirable,  and  which  he  could 
make  ridiculous  only  by  associating  them  with  a  disordered 
intellect?  Give  Don  Quixote  a  dose  of  hellebore  and  clear 
his  brain  and  he  becomes  one  of  the  most  high-minded  gentle- 
men in  literature.  I  am  not  deeply  read  in  modern  fiction, 
but  I  have  a  suspicion  that  it  is  more  or  less  Cervantesque, 
Voltairean,  Gil-Blase.  I  fear  that  one  of  the  chief  dangers 
of  youth  is  the  danger  of  having  their  enthusiasms  ridiculed 
and  mocked  out  of  them  by  the  cynics  of  modern  literature. 
How  fresh  and  sane  and  true  to  men's  best  instincts  is  Greek 
literature  in  this  respect,  Homer  and  the  Tragedians,  and 
Pindar  and  Plato !  I  have  a  deep  conviction  that  in  our  mod- 
ern life,  the  refuge  of  a  sound  and  cheerful  faith  in  human 
nature,  and  the  citadel  when  the  defence  against  its  pessi- 


52  THE  VERY  ELECT 

mistic  and  Mephistophelian  enemies  must  be  maintained,  are 
our  colleges.  But  in  order  to  keep  them  so,  we  must  exercise 
unceasing  vigilance  to  keep  Schopenhauers  out  of  our  chairs 
of  philosophy,  and  to  have  the  humanities  and  the  moralities 
taught  by  men  and  women  who  have  faith  and  hope  and 
charity. 

III.  And  the  students'  view  of  life  includes  also  service. 
I  think  you  can  hardly  affront  the  young  students'  prophecy 
of  themselves  more  deeply  than  by  implying  that  they  will 
have  no  part  in  the  world's  work,  and  no  share  in  the  triumph 
to  be  achieved.  Their  idealism  is  no  selfish,  personal  culture. 
Their  optimism  is  no  dolce  far  niente  self-contentment.  The 
true  idealism,  the  true  optimism  have  in  them  propulsive 
power.  Just  as  the  artist's  idea  haunts  him  by  day  and  by 
night  till  he  realize  it  in  some  concrete  production,  so  the 
young  enthusiast  is  impatient  to  put  his  or  her  dream  of  life 
into  some  tangible  shape,  some  beneficent  service,  some  insti- 
tution, some  home,  some  humanity.  A  confirmation  of  this 
view  which  will  at  once  occur  to  every  one  is  the  prominent 
part  taken  by  college  students  and  young  graduates  in  all 
the  reforms  of  the  day.  Just  as  a  casual  dog-fight  in  the  streets 
of  a  city  will  bring  instantly  out  of  their  holes  and  kennels  a 
crowd  of  the  lowest  class,  just  as  an  accident  will  draw  around 
its  victim  a  crowd  of  kind-hearted  men  and  women,  so  surely 
does  the  emergence  of  a  great  moral,  social  or  religious  ques- 
tion draw  into  its  activity  a  crowd  of  college  students.  The 
most  determined  class  which  brute  absolutism  has  had  to 
deal  with  in  Paris,  or  Germany,  or  Russia,  is  the  class  of  uni- 
versity students.  The  most  hopeful  movement  of  our  times 
in  behalf  of  the  degraded  masses  is  the  University  movement 
in  East  London,  a  movement  which  is  reproducing  itself  in 
all  the  great  cities  of  Christendom.  The  most  significant 
religious  event  of  our  day  is  the  missionary  uprising  in  our 
colleges  in  behalf  of  the  evangelization  of  the  world.  Even 
men  who  are  not  to  the  manner  born,  but  who  study  the 


COLLEGE  IDEALS  IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE      53 

leadings  of  the  times — men  like  Mr.  Moody — have  come  to  see 
that  the  way  to  get  control  of  the  forces  that  control  society 
is  to  found  colleges  and  mobilize  the  college  spirit.  What  a 
mighty  power  of  young  life,  and  high  purpose,  and  potential 
daring  and  sacrifice,  is  lodged  in  the  hundreds  of  college 
communities  in  the  United  States !  I  was  present  at  a  patri- 
otic meeting  last  fourth  of  July  to  which  the  representatives 
of  some  thirty  or  forty  colleges  in  succession  contributed 
each  their  college  yell.  I  thought  I  heard  in  all  this  vocal 
tumult  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  illimitable  valor,  as 
though  it  had  been  the  multitudinous  response  of  young 
hearts  to  the  question,  Quis  pro  Domino?  Who  is  on  the  Lord's 
side?  And  how  it  cheers  those  who  are  planning  the  campaigns 
of  the  Lord,  and  heartens  those  who  are  already  in  the  field, 
to  think  what  power  there  is  in  these  multitudes  of  youth 
out  of  which  future  levies  are  coming!  And  so  when  the 
fight  is  going  hard,  and  the  veterans  drop  off  one  by  one,  and 
we  begin  to  flag  and^waver,  then  it  is  good  to  hear  coming  on 
the  air  the  slogan  of  Harvard  and  Yale,  the  sweet  marching 
songs  of  Vassar  and  Wellesley,  and  to  know  that  those  that 
are  for  us  are  more  than  those  that  be  against  us.  Blessings 
on  your  young  hearts!  You  little  know  how  your  eager  eyes 
and  glowing  cheeks  and  firm  steps,  as  you  come  year  by  year 
from  college  halls  into  the  ranks  of  toiling  men  and  women, 
bring  light  and  hope  and  energy  into  the  long  tedious  strife! 
You  bring  to  us  heroism  out  of  Plutarch,  scorn  of  ease  from  the 
Odyssey,  patriotism  from  Thucydides  and  Livy,  high  ambition 
from  Cicero.  From  the  great  philosophies  you  bring  lofty 
ideas  of  man's  capabilities;  from  the  history  of  the  progress 
man  has  made  in  the  past  you  bring  most  glowing  prog- 
nostication of  the  progress  he  may  make  in  the  future. 
We  must  not  insist  too  literally  on  the  ancient  maxim, 
"The  old  for  counsel,  the  young  for  war."  The  counsel 
of  age  is  too  timid,  too  anxious,  too  mindful  of  difficulties, 
for  a  time  of  great  opportunities  like  ours.  We  live  in  a 


54  THE  VERY  ELECT 

time  when  the  kingdom  of  heaven  suffereth  violence  and 
the  violent  take  it  by  force.  That  a  movement  in  the 
interest  of  good  morals  or  religion,  is  bold  even  to  rashness, 
is  something  unprecedented,  something  bordering  on  the 
quixotic,  is  nothing  against  it,  is  rather  a  testimony  to  its 
splendid  courage.  When  the  gates  of  a  hundred  colleges  are 
opened  every  summer  and  there  pour  through  them  into  the 
world  of  action  thousands  of  brave  young  hearts  panting  for 
activity  in  the  world's  work,  we  may  well  expect  to  see  thrust 
upon  public  attention  and  pushed  forward  into  practical 
experiment,  enterprises  which  the  fathers  never  dreamed  of, 
which  the  wisest  prophets  and  kings  never  foresaw,  but  which 
will  prove  to  be  the  beneficent  agencies  of  the  future  for  the 
world's  redemption. 

It  may  be  that  at  this  point,  I  have  exposed  myself  and  you 
to  a  criticism  which  I  must  hasten  to  disarm,  the  criticism, 
namely,  that  this  collegiate  standard  of  thought  and  life  is 
the  standard  for  a  select  few,  that  it  is,  to  use  an  expressive 
popular  epithet,  " sniffy,"  that  like  some  theological  systems, 
it  includes  only  you  and  me  and  a  few  of  our  friends.  I 
hasten  to  say,  and  insist,  that  the  collegiate  conception  of  life 
is  democratic.  I  need  not  remind  you  that  of  all  human  as- 
semblies the  public  school  and  the  college  are  the  most  demo- 
cratic, that  in  no  other  place  does  a  youth  so  inevitably  find 
his  or  her  true  level.  There  are  certain  small  city  institutions 
in  which  distinctions  of  caste  are  rigidly  maintained,  but  it  is 
at  the  expense  of  all  real  mental  and  moral  vitality  and  growth. 
In  the  great  English  Universities,  where  social  distinctions 
have  been  formally  recognized,  the  natural  tendency  of  talent 
and  mind  to  win  the  great  prizes  of  university  life  has  always 
counteracted  and, practically  nullified  the  false  claims  of  gen- 
tility. In  the  collegiate  world,  even  more  than  in  the  social 
or  the  political  world,  students  get  the  rank  they  deserve. 
Hence  as  a  result,  partly  of  their  experience,  partly  of  their 
historic  and  philosophic  studies,  their  philosophy  of  life  is 


COLLEGE  IDEALS  IN  PRACTICAL  LIFE      55 

generous  and  comprehensive,  not  selfish  and  exclusive.  All 
large,  hopeful  schemes  of  reconstructing  human  society,  the 
Pantisocracy  of  Southey  and  Coleridge,  the  millennial  dreams 
of  Owen  and  Fourier  and  Bellamy,  are  apt  to  have  a  fascina- 
tion for  them.  I  never  heard  of  a  college  in  which  Machia- 
vellism  was  taught,  and  could  not  conceive  of  such  an  attempt 
being  made  without  a  rebellion  of  the  whole  body  of  students. 
Even  the  maxims  of  a  gracious  and  paternal  government 
commended  to  the  French  Dauphin  by  all  the  genius  and  art 
of  Fenelon  never  could  have  been  taught  to  a  body  of  students 
as  practical  principles  of  government.  Our  boys  and  girls 
will  endure  Telemaque  as  an  easy  French  exercise,  but  in  a 
political  science  class  Telemaque  would  soon  get  put  out  of 
window,  and  perhaps  the  professor  with  him.  I  speak  from 
long  experience  when  I  say  that  nothing  will  satisfy  the  stu- 
dent's conviction  and  feeling  of  what  is  due  to  humanity  in 
its  social  and  political  relations  short  of  the  largest  possible 
distribution  of  powers  and  privileges  among  the  people.  If 
a  college  should,  as  an  exercise  in  political  science,  resolve 
itself  into  a  constitutional  convention,  the  constitution  which 
they  would  construct  for  a  state  or  nation  would  be  the  most 
liberal,  the  most  democratic,  ever  put  forth  by  any  body  of  men. 
And  this  gives  us  the  closing  thought  of  my  theme, — that  the 
highest  ideas,  the  noblest  ideals,  are  practicable,  if  only  what 
Ruskin  calls  a  majestic  judgment  be  put  into  the  task  of  mak- 
ing them  real.  There  is  a  total  change  of  realm  between  the 
noun  "vision"  and  the  adjective  "visionary."  If  one  has 
seen  a  vision  in  the  true  divine  light,  that  which  he  has  seen 
is  not  visionary.  To  say  that  a  scheme  is  Utopian  is  not  to 
say  that  it  is  too  good  to  be  a  fact,  but  that  it  is  not  good 
enough — not  true  to  all  the  conditions  of  the  case.  We  do 
not  want  Utopia  here  in  this  coming  twentieth  century,  we 
want  something  vastly  better.  College  ideals  are  none  too 
good  for  human  nature;  or  let  me  put  it  thus,  that  human 
nature  is  not  unworthy  of  college  ideals.  Who  would  have 


56  THE  VERY  ELECT 

thought  that  the  briar  of  the  heath  could  produce  the  Jac- 
queminot rose?  The  capabilities  of  human  nature  are  infinite, 
provided  infinite  pains  be  taken  to  develop  its  capabilities. 
If  the  mission  of  the  college-bred  man  or  woman  is  to  get  the 
higher  things  of  life  appreciated,  the  first  requisite  for  this 
task  is  to  have  faith  in  human  nature,  in  its  capacity  of  dis- 
cernment, of  sympathy,  of  inspiration.  Believe  me,  there  is 
no  great  principle  fitted  to  enter  beneficently  into  the  life  of 
mankind  that  cannot  be  appreciated  if  it  be  patiently  and 
lovingly  urged  upon  the  common  mind  and  heart.  Do  not 
let  education  make  you  conceited  and  cynical.  Let  it  rather 
impress  upon  you  the  boundless  teachableness  of  mankind, 
and  the  duty  and  joy  of  imparting  the  good  thoughts  that 
have  come  to  you.  Freely  ye  have  received;  freely  give. 


ART 

Is  ART  a  mere  pastime,  an  elegant  and  refined  amusement, 
or  has  it  a  nobler  office?  Has  it  any  such  claim  upon  us 
that  it  can  come  to  us  and  say,  "You  ought  to  give  me  a  place 
among  the  things  you  prize  and  strive  for?"  Is  human  life 
complete  without  art,  or  if  not  poetically  complete,  is  it  in 
any  important  sense  marred  and  defrauded,  without  art? 
Does  a  man  lose  anything  essential  to  his  manhood,  if  he 
leave  art  entirely  out  of  his  education  and  experience?  Or, 
to  make  the  question  directly  and  intensely  practical,  If  a 
man  wishes  to  make  the  most  of  himself  in  a  noble,  Christian 
way,  will  he  bestow  any  time  and  thought  on  the  Fine  Arts? 
These  are  some  of  the  interesting  questions  about  art  which 
many  would  like  to  have  answered.  Another  is  this.  Sup- 
posing it  proved  that  art  has  an  important  office  in  every 
true  life,  is  it  within  the  reach  of  every  life?  Can  those 
who  will  never  see  a  genuine  Old  Master,  or  a  piece  of  antique 
sculpture,  or  a  Gothic  cathedral,  as  long  as  they  live,  get 
any  of  the  influence  of  art  into  their  lives?  or  is  art  something 
for  the  few,  for  those  who  have  leisure  and  abundance,  while 
the  many  must  not  only  lack  the  culture  which  art  brings, 
but  may  not  even  know  what  it  is  that  they  lack? 

You  will  easily  see  why  I  ask  these  questions.  Into  the 
midst  of  our  practical  matter-of-fact  New  England  Puritan 
communities  art  has  come  late,  in  very  modest  guise,  and 
yet  with  a  certain  air  which  bespeaks  high  pretensions.  She 
claims  from  us  money,  time,  thought,  admiration,  and  even 
a  kind  of  worship.  If  truth  were  spoken,  many  among  us 
hardly  know  what  to  think  of  her.  She  seems  to  look  with 
a  sort  of  stately  disdain  over  the  things  we  are  busied  with 
into  some  far-off  scene  whose  light  is  reflected  back  into 

57 


58  THE  VERY  ELECT 

her  face  and  from  hers  into  ours  as  we  gaze  upon  her,  until, 
in  this  new  and  strange  light,  things  which  had  always  seemed 
great  become  paltry,  and  things  we  never  saw  before  suddenly 
appear  to  us  among  the  great  things  of  life.  But  having 
been  taught  to  look  upon  all  fancies  as  idle,  and  all  idleness 
as  not  only  sin  but  loss,  we  are  inclined  to  shake  off  the  spell 
from  us,  and  turn  back  to  the  practical  work  of  life,  doubting, 
at  least,  whether  we  can  afford  to  give  this  newcomer  a  place 
in  our  minds  and  hearts.  It  is  natural  for  the  races  that 
inhabit  the  luxuriant  South  and  the  gorgeous  East  to  indulge 
their  lively  and  festive  imaginations  with  the  beautiful  sights 
and  sounds  which  art  can  create:  it  is  well  enough  for  those 
who  have  abundant  means  of  culture  and  opportunities  for 
travel,  to  assimilate  to  themselves  so  far  as  is  possible, 
these  elegant  tastes  and  enjoyments  of  the  artistic  races: 
but  has  not  Providence  in  its  distribution  of  good  things, 
while  bestowing  on  others  the  graces,  assigned  to  us  the 
homelier  and  grander  virtues  of  life,  the  coarse  rather  than 
the  fine  arts,  the  arts  by  which  nature  is  subdued,  comforts 
are  multiplied  and  cheapened,  political  freedom,  social  order, 
moral  and  religious  well-being  secured  for  ourselves  and  for 
all  mankind?  I  have  stated  as  well  as  I  can  the  doubts 
and  questionings  concerning  art  which  thrust  themselves 
on  a  people  to  whom  art  is  not  native  and  reflection  is;  and 
I  shall  now  try  to  answer  them.  I  shall  present  some  reasons 
for  thinking  that  art  is  not  an  accident  of  special  races  or 
particular  circumstances,  but  an  essential  element  of  human 
life:  that  it  is  not  a  mere  elegant  amusement  but  a  practical 
force  in  character  and  life  to  which  both  were  originally 
adjusted,  and  without  which  both  are  incomplete  and  I  will 
even  say  deformed:  that  art  comes  to  us  not  as  a  suppliant 
for  favor  and  patronage,  but  with  an  imperial  right  to  com- 
mand our  homage:  and  that  far  from  reserving  her  benign 
influences  for  the  favored  few,  she  distributes  them  to  all 
conditions  of  men,  to  each  according  to  its  capacity  to  receive, 


ART:  A  LECTURE  59 

and  even  bestows  on  the  lowly  and  poor  some  peculiar  favors 
which  she  withholds  from  all  others. 

Speaking  in  the  plainest  possible  terms,  art  is  the  material- 
izing of  ideas,  the  concrete  expression  of  mental  conceptions. 
The  Creator  has  put  into  the  human  mind,  as  one  of  its 
richest  endowments,  the  power  and  the  desire  of  expression; 
that  is,  the  embodiment  of  its  thoughts,  imaginings,  feelings, 
resolves,  in  some  outward  form.  First  and  most  effective 
of  all  modes  of  utterance  is  language,  including  facial  expres- 
sion and  gesture,  and  reaching  its  highest  power  in  poetry, 
music  and  dramatic  action.  But  besides  these  natural  arts, 
so  to  speak,  man  has  power  to  use  a  great  variety  of  material 
objects  as  embodiments  and  memorials  of  his  thoughts  and 
feelings,  such  as  wood,  clay,  marble  and  many  other  kinds 
of  stone,  the  precious  metals,  colors.  He  can  take  a  block 
of  cold  white  marble  and  put  so  much  of  his  thought  into  it 
and  pour  so  much  of  his  feeling  round  it,  that  for  generations 
and  ages  after,  men  will  gather  round  that  piece  of  marble 
and  get  from  it  more  high  thought  and  more  noble  feeling 
than  any  living  man  can  inspire  in  them.  What  is  this  power? 
Whence  came  it?  How  does  it  work?  The  power  is  the 
two-fold  power  of  thought  and  feeling  interfused,  the  greatest 
power  that  man  can  use  or  can  feel.  It  came  from  the  artist's 
mind,  as  great  there  as  here,  but  great  only  for  him.  By 
expressing  it  in  marble,  he  realized  it,  as  we  say;  he  made  it 
objective,  and  brought  it  home  to  us.  A  work  of  art,  then, 
includes  these  several  things:  first,  a  thought  or  conception 
of  something;  secondly,  a  feeling  towards  it — love,  admira- 
tion, reverence,  some  pure  and  elevating  emotion;  and  thirdly, 
the  skill  which  blends  these  so  perfectly  with  the  material  of 
expression,  be  it  marble  or  color,  that  no  separate  impression 
shall  be  made  by  the  thought,  the  feeling,  or  the  material, 
but  there  shall  be  one  single  and  total  impression,  that  namely 
of  the  artist's  conception  realized  in  material  form.  By 
thought  in  a  work  of  art,  I  mean  a  true  conception;  by  feel- 
ing, I  mean  a  loving,  or  admiring,  or  reverent  conception. 


60  THE  VERY  ELECT 

For  the  sake  of  what  I  shall  say  hereafter,  I  must  emphasize 
the  importance  of  thought  or  truth  in  art.  Without  any 
question,  whether  or  not  that  which  is  true  is  always  beautiful, 
that  which  is  beautiful  is  always  true.  In  so  far  as  any  object, 
beautiful  otherwise  though  it  may  be,  violates  the  truth  of 
things,  by  so  much  it  fails  of  perfect  beauty.  As  in  the 
freest  and  wildest  strains  of  music,  every  note  and  every 
succession  and  combination  of  notes  must  conform  to  a 
strict  mathematical  law  which  with  tyrannous  rigor  pre- 
scribes what  may  be  and  what  may  not  be  in  music,  so  in 
all  art  the  first  condition,  without  which  there  is  no  art,  but 
only  bungling  and  failure,  is  a  most  religious  conformity 
to  the  truth  of  the  conception,  whatever  it  may  be,  which 
art  professes  to  embody.  In  sculpture,  the  neglect  or  falsi- 
fication of  anatomy;  in  painting,  the  violation  of  perspective 
or  of  light  and  shade;  in  architecture,  the  stuccoed  or  frescoed 
falsehood, — all  departures  from  truth,  though  in  the  fancied 
interest  of  beauty,  are  always  blemishes  and  often  mon- 
strosities. Here  lies  the  cause  of  nine  out  of  ten  failures 
in  art,  as  in  life, — in  the  lack  of  conscience, — of  supreme 
reverence  for  truth.  Here  is  the  cause  of  the  difference 
between  superficial  and  profound  art,  the  art  of  Canova 
and  the  art  of  Michael  Angelo — the  failure  to  recognize 
the  supreme  dominion  of  law  and  truth  in  art  as  in  all  other 
departments  of  life.  One  teacher  of  art  thus  sadly  expresses 
his  experience:  "It  is  easy  to  provoke  to  enthusiasm,  but 
I  have  hitherto  found  it  impossible  to  humiliate  one  student 
into  perfect  accuracy."  That  is  the  right  phrase,  humiliate 
— to  take  down  this  topping  spirit  of  untutored  vanity  which 
assumes  that  it  can  make  truth  at  its  own  capricious  wish, 
and  awe  it  into  reverence  of  that  truth  which  neither  God 
nor  man  can  vary  one  hair's  breadth  from  its  eternal  fixed- 
ness. The  place  and  value  of  a  work  of  art  depends  largely 
on  the  amount  of  thought  it  contains.  There  may  be  as 
much  thought  in  a  great  painting,  like  Leonardo's  Last  Supper, 


ART:  A  LECTURE  61 

as  there  is  in  a  system  of  philosophy.  I  am  not  sure  but 
there  is  as  much  science  on  the  walls  of  the  Sistine  Chapel 
as  there  is  in  the  Vatican  Library. 

All  this,  however,  is  very  different  from  saying  that  art 
is  the  expression  of  fact.  Imitation  is  the  lowest  form  of  art. 
To  take  a  correct  profile  by  outlining  a  shadow  on  the  wall; 
to  arrest  the  reflection  of  a  face  on  a  camera;  to  paint  a 
Dutch  interior  so  that  the  copper  kettles  shall  shine  and  the 
tiles  in  the  chimney  shall  glimmer, — this  is  not  art  in  any 
true  and  high  sense.  When  a  true  artist  paints  a  landscape, 
or  a  human  face,  or  a  domestic  scene,  he  strives  with  all  the 
powers  he  has,  with  his  understanding,  his  memory,  his 
learning,  his  imagination,  first  to  comprehend  and  then  to 
realize  the  whole  truth,  partly  on  the  surface  and  partly 
underlying,  which  is  in  the  subject.  If  there  is  no  deep  or 
important  truth  in  it,  it  is  not  a  subject  for  art.  If  he  cannot 
find  the  truth  which  is  in  it,  he  will  abandon  the  subject. 
Take  such  a  subject  as  a  tree — say  a  beech-tree — no  unworthy 
subject  for  the  most  skilful  pencil.  The  problem  in  the 
artist's  mind  is  to  conceive  not  merely  of  a  beech-tree,  but 
of  the  beech-tree, — the  tree  which  shall  be  typical  of  all  the 
possibilities  of  that  species  of  tree, — a  tree  which  shall  be 
at  the  same  time  an  individual  and  the  whole  species.  Now 
of  course  he  will  never  find  such  a  tree.  It  must  in  the 
end  be  the  product  of  his  Imagination.  Does  he  therefore, 
shut  himself  in  his  studio  and  imagine  his  beech-tree?  Not 
at  all.  Go  and  look  at  his  portfolio  and  you  will  find  it  full 
of  "studies"  of  beech-trees.  What  is  he  studying?  The 
ideal  tree  in  the  actual  trees.  But  can  he  ever  make  a  better 
tree  than  Nature  has  made?  Certainly  he  cannot.  He 
could  not  in  a  whole  lifetime  with  the  aid  of  all  the  arts  and 
sciences  which  man  possesses,  make  a  single  cell  of  a  beech- 
tree.  He  is  not  trying  to  make  a  tree  at  all.  He  is  making 
the  picture  or  image  of  a  tree.  And  he  with  his  rational 
imagination  can  image  forth  to  our  imagination  more  of  the 


62  THE  VERY  ELECT 

divine  conception  of  a  tree  than  blind  Nature  can.  In  other 
words,  he  can  make  Nature  tell  him  what  God's  idea  of  a 
beech-tree  is  better  than  her  best  realization  of  that  idea. 
She  is  capable  only  of  facts,  of  imperfect  individual  facts; 
he  is  capable  of  conceiving  a  truth,  the  general  fact  which 
is  imperfectly  expressed  in  the  individual  facts.  So  of  the 
human  face.  What  the  photographer  does  is  to  fix  the  solar 
reflection  of  a  face,  as  it  was  set  for  the  occasion  at  twenty- 
three  minutes  past  eleven  on  the  27th  of  February;  or  rather, 
not  so  much  a  face  as  a  set  of  features  from  which  by  the 
necessities  of  the  case,  all  thought  and  feeling,  all  sense  and 
soul,  had,  for  the  time  being,  vanished.  What  the  portrait- 
painter  does,  your  Titian  or  your  Reynolds,  is  to  paint  a 
man  or  a  woman,  the  whole  man  or  woman,  soul  and  all,  so 
that  standing  in  front  of  the  portrait  you  feel  that  from  that 
picture  the  man  or  woman  may  be  known,  their  character, 
their  history  even,  by  one  who  has  the  requisite  discernment, 
as  from  the  man  or  woman  themselves,  better  than  from  any 
transient  acquaintance.  And  from  this  follow  two  important 
inferences;  first,  that  the  true  portrait  of  a  man  is  a  portrait 
of  him  at  his  best,  taken  in  his  period  of  greatest  power,  at 
the  culmination  of  his  life,  in  some  supreme  moment  of  his 
experience.  And  secondly,  that  such  a  portrait  does  not, 
as  the  common  expression  is,  " flatter  him."  Other  portraits, 
other  appearances  of  the  man  himself  may  fail  to  do  him 
justice;  he  is  not  flattered  by  being  taken  at  his  best. 

Or  take  the  highest  of  all  subjects,  human  life  in  some  of 
its  representative  aspects,  pathetic,  tragic,  heroic.  The 
great  pictures,  those  conceived  and  executed  in  what  is  called 
the  grand  style,  produce  the  same  effect  on  you  as  the  Para- 
dise Lost  or  Macbeth.  They  dwarf  everything  else,  especially 
yourself.  They  force  on  you  the  feeling:  "Here  are  thoughts 
far  beyond  me;  if  ever  I  reach  them  it  must  be  by  growing 
up  to  them."  That  other  spirit  which  so  often  airs  itself 
in  books  of  travel  and  in  private,  very  private  criticism, 


ART:  A  LECTURE  63 

which  would  belittle  a  thing  too  great  for  it  to  comprehend, 
and  claim  the  credit  of  frankness  for  doing  so,  is  to  be  classed 
with  other  forms  of  ignorance  and  unbelief  and  so  called  by 
the  right  name. 

But  a  work  of  art  must  have  something  more  than  thought 
in  it,  must  be  something  more  than  the  embodiment  of  truth. 
It  must  embody  also  the  feeling  which  the  thought  is  adapted 
to  awaken.  Sic  cogitavit — thus  thought  Francis  Bacon — 
marks  the  Philosopher.  The  Poet  and  the  Painter  add, 
thus  I  thought  and  felt.  All  true  art  has  a  moral  quality. 
In  a  purely  mathematical  figure,  a  triangle,  a  square,  a  circle, 
there  is  no  beauty.  Here  we  have  perfect  expression  of 
pure  intellectual  conceptions.  Beauty  comes  in  with  deflexion 
from  the  mathematical  form,  with  the  line  of  beauty  in  which 
one  curve  bends  insensibly  to  meet  an  opposite  curve,  as  in 
the  outline  of  a  Grecian  vase.  What  we  mean  by  grace  in 
figures  is  that  the  stiff  mathematical  line  has  been  made  fluent 
as  though  by  the  infusion  into  it  of  some  moral  quality  like 
gentleness  or  submission.  Is  this,  then,  a  violation  of  truth? 
No,  but  mathematical  truth  has  been  embraced  and  overcome 
by  a  higher,  a  moral  truth.  One  curve  of  a  pointed  arch 
springing  up  its  airy  way  is  met  by  another,  and  each,  as 
for  love  of  the  other,  stays  in  mid  career.  All  color  has  a 
moral  quality  apart  from  the  object  which  bears  it.  Every 
distinct  shade  expresses  a  different  feeling.  One  color  is 
soothing;  another  is  irritating.  Purple  is  royal  by  nature, 
not  merely  by  usage;  red  is  martial,  black  is  funereal,  white 
is  festive,  by  the  canons  of  moral  instinct.  And  I  do  not 
think  it  enough  to  say  that  these  feelings  are  due  to  associa- 
tion or  suggestion;  or  to  say  with  Allston  that  we  impute 
these  qualities  to  certain  forms  and  colors.  I  think  that  the 
line,  the  form,  the  color,  not  only  suggest  but  actually  express 
moral  feeling.  To  return  for  a  moment  to  our  beech-tree. 
Why  should  a  painter  choose  a  beech-tree  for  a  subject  rather 
than  a  white  pine?  Because  as  a  single  tree  it  is  a  more 


64  THE  VERY  ELECT 

interesting  tree.  Why?  Because  its  possibilities  of  moral 
expression  are  greater.  The  beech-tree,  when  fully  brought 
out,  embodies  the  ideas  of  firmness  mingling  with  playfulness 
in  its  roots;  ''wreathing/'  as  Gray  has  it,  "its  old  fantastic 
roots  so  high":  of  power  and  endurance  in  its  solid  bole;  of 
humility  and  tenderness  in  long  drooping  branches  bowing 
down  to  kiss  the  gnarled  roots.  And  it  may  be  said  in  general 
that  the  great  landscape  painters  are  those  who  have  had  the 
deepest  insight  into  the  moral  meanings  of  nature  and  made 
their  landscapes  most  expressive  of  human  feelings.  In 
Claude  nature  seems  in  a  reverie;  in  Salvator  Rosa,  in  a 
passion;  in  Gainsborough,  to  be  enjoying  domestic  repose. 
And  be  it  said  in  honor  of  the  painters  that  down  to  the  time 
of  Wordsworth  they  interpreted  the  moral  aspects  of  natural 
scenery  better  than  did  the  poets.  Long  before  Wordsworth 
wrote,  the  English  landscape  painters  had  said  in  language 
as  full  of  feeling  as  his,  that  for  them 

"The  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

The  art  in  which  feeling  is  thought  to  have  least  play,  is 
Architecture.  And  yet  what  is  more  radiant  of  feeling  than 
a  Gothic  church?  When  we  say  that  such  a  church  is  a 
hymn  in  stone,  what  do  we  mean  but  that  the  church  and 
the  hymn  express  the  same  moral  ideas?  I  once  took  a  young 
boy  who  had  seen  in  churches  only  the  bareness  of  the  meeting- 
house into  a  cathedral.  The  vastness  of  the  space,  the  lofti- 
ness of  the  roof,  the  dimness  of  the  light,  put  him  into  an 
agony  of  terror;  he  trembled  from  head  to  foot  and  burst 
into  tears.  This  is  what  the  cathedral  builders  unconsciously 
meant — to  express  the  awfulness,  the  infinity  of  those  mighty 
truths  which  Christianity  had  lifted  up  to  the  vision  of  man. 
On  a  maturer  mind — perhaps  on  the  mind  of  the  child  in  due 
time — another  and  a  more  permanent  impression  would  have 
been  produced.  There  is  something — and  it  must  be  a  moral 


ART:  A  LECTURE  65 

something — in  those  slender  pillars  reaching  up  from  the  com- 
mon light  at  their  feet  to  the  arched  twilight  of  the  far-away 
roof, — and  this  also  was  in  the  soul  of  the  builders  though  they 
may  never  have  said  it, — something  that  uplifts  the  thoughts 
from  the  flat  and  sordid  pavements  of  earth  into  the  upper 
space  where  all  the  lines  of  grace  meet  and  where  the  light 
is  soft  and  heavenly. 

The  art  element  in  life,  then,  as  I  have  called  it,  is  this 
divinely  implanted  impulse  and  tendency  to  express  the 
true  and  the  good  in  the  beautiful.  Set  the  imagination 
at  work  to  invent  something  in  which  a  high  thought  and  a 
noble  feeling  shall  have  fitting  expression  and  you  have  all 
the  elements  of  Art;  first  the  truth,  the  high  thought,  the 
inspiring  theme;  then  the  fine  feeling  inspired  by  the  thought; 
next  the  imagination  blending  the  two  into  an  image  of  beauty; 
finally  the  skill  which  makes  the  image  objective  in  some 
sensuous  form.  Art  as  thus  understood  has  a  wide  field  in 
life;  its  forms  are  manifold.  Wherever  men  put  their  best 
head-work,  heart-work,  and  hand-work,  their  thought,  feeling 
and  skill  into  material  objects,  there  is  at  least  an  attempt 
at  art. 

Let  us  speak  first  of  Art  in  connection  with  use.  In  a 
charming  paper  by  Cardinal  Wiseman  on  "The  Identifica- 
tion of  the  Artisan  and  Artist,"  he  imagines  first  that  we  have 
formed  a  cabinet  of  Classic  Art  containing  the  most  beautiful 
of  all  the  relics  of  antiquity,  vases  with  their  wonderful  draw- 
ings, bronze  vessels  of  the  most  exquisite  carving,  medals 
in  gold  and  silver,  engraved  gems,  mosaics,  etc.  He  then 
imagines  that  the  owner  of  all  these  things  comes  to  claim  them 
from  us  and  to  assign  each  to  its  proper  place  and  use.  That 
mosaic,  railed  off  so  carefully  lest  some  one  should  soil  it, 
he  orders  put  back  to  the  floor  of  his  parlor.  Looking  at 
one  beautiful  vase  he  says,  "Take  that  to  the  kitchen,  that 
is  to  hold  oil;  take  that  to  the  scullery,  that  is  for  water; 
take  these  plates  and  drinking  cups  to  the  pantry;  I  shall 


66  THE  VERY  ELECT 

want  them  at  dinner.  And  those  smaller,  those  beautiful 
vessels  which  yet  retain  the  very  scent  of  the  rich  odors  which 
were  kept  in  them,  take  these  to  the  dressing-rooms,  these 
are  what  we  want  on  our  toilet.  This  is  a  washing-basin 
which  I  have  been  accustomed  to  use.  What  have  they  been 
making  of  all  these  things  to  put  them  under  glass  and  treat 
them  as  wonderful  works  of  art?"  And  then  Wiseman  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  these  beautiful  things  were  not  only 
things  of  everyday  use,  but  that  they  belonged  to  ordinary 
citizens,  both  because  they  were  found  in  the  inferior  houses 
of  the  buried  cities,  and  because  in  no  houses  have  poor  and 
ugly  articles  for  the  same  uses  been  found.  The  question 
comes  to  us  with  provoking  point,  "a  thousand  years  hence, 
will  they  dig  up  from  the  debris  of  the  nineteenth  century 
any  of  our  household  utensils  and  put  them  under  a  glass 
case  in  a  cabinet  as  precious  gems  of  art;  our  stoves,  for 
example,  our  kerosene  lamps,  and,  save  the  mark,  our  spit- 
toons? If  we  ask  why  household  art  was  so  much  higher 
among  the  Greeks  than  among  us,  we  shall  find  that  in  the 
first  place  they  put  better  thought  into  it  than  we  do,  and 
secondly,  better  feeling.  We  put  thought  enough  into  our 
making  of  these  objects  but  it  is  not  true  thought,  not  honest 
thought,  but  contrivance,  scheming,  money-making  craft. 
Things  are  made  now-a-days  to  sell,  not  to  use.  Now  and 
then,  however,  we  find  an  article  which  bears  evidence  of 
having  had  good  thorough  study  put  into  it,  and  it  is  inter- 
esting to  see  that  such  an  article  invariably  approaches  at 
least  to  beauty,  a  Maydol  hammer,  for  example,  or  a  Brooks- 
ville  axe,  or  an  Ames  plow.  When  we  visit  archaeological 
exhibitions,  and  see  the  implements  and  utensils  of  a  hundred 
years  ago  side  by  side  with  the  most  perfect  patterns  of 
today  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  one  of  the  most  instructive 
lessons  is,  I  think,  that  the  objects  most  perfectly  adapted 
to  their  use  by  modern  invention  are  those  which  have  most 
genuine  art  in  them. 


ART:  A  LECTURE  67 

But  a  still  stronger  reason  for  the  inferiority  of  our  house- 
hold art  is  that  we  do  not  put  enough  of  right  feeling  into  it. 
The  distinction  that  we  make  between  things  for  use  and 
things  for  show,  between  everyday  life  and  fine  life,  is  fatal 
to  art.  A  stranger  traveling  through  our  country  and 
noticing  the  very  common  practise  of  painting  the  three  sides 
of  a  house  which  can  be  seen  from  the  road  white,  and  the 
rear  red,  might  be  excused  for  saying  to  himself  that  it  was 
hopeless  to  expect  any  art  from  a  people  so  given  to  shams. 
If  Art  means  to  us  something  that  we  keep  merely  for  show, 
our  Art  will  be  insincere,  and  will  become  false.  If  we  make 
one  style  of  thing  for  service  and  another  for  ornament  instead 
of  making  the  serviceable  thing  so  thoroughly,  so  truly  to 
its  own  nature  that  ornament  becomes  a  necessary  part  of  it, 
we  shall  infallibly  produce  ugliness  for  service  and  false 
ornamentation  for  show.  The  true  genesis  of  art  as  con- 
nected with  use  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Ruskin:  "The 
moment  we  make  anything  useful  thoroughly,  it  is  a  law  of 
our  nature  that  we  shall  be  pleased  with  ourselves  and  with 
the  thing  we  have  made,  and  become  desirous,  therefore, 
to  adorn  or  complete  it  in  some  dainty  way  with  finer  art 
expressive  of  our  pleasure. "  Here  we  have  again  our  doctrine 
of  conscience  and  love.  I  believe  that  this  principle  so  happily 
stated  by  Mr.  Ruskin  would,  if  obeyed,  fill  our  land  with 
works  of  the  truest  art.  We  must  not  be  too  technical  and 
fastidious  in  our  limitations  of  Art,  but  should  recognize  and 
honor  it  wherever  it  really  exists,  even  in  humblest  guise. 
In  my  boyhood,  I  knew  a  shoemaker  who  was  a  genuine 
artist.  It  was  very  interesting  to  watch  him  finishing  a 
fine  boot.  You  could  not  get  him  to  make  a  cheap  article. 
He  would  use  none  but  the  best  material,  and  that  he  would 
make  up  thoroughly  well,  and  then,  when  the  boot  began  to 
take  shape  he  would  handle  it  as  though  he  loved  it,  and 
finish  it  up,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  with  a  kind  of  dainty  art 
expressive  of  his  pleasure.  There  is  hardly  any  work  fit  for 


68  THE  VERY   ELECT 

a  human  being  to  do,  which  has  not  a  place  for  art  in  it,  and 
is  not  better  for  giving  art  that  place.  And  I  doubt  very 
much  whether  we  in  this  country  shall  ever  get  much  high 
art,  art  for  its  own  sake,  worthy  of  the  name,  until  we  get  a 
better  quality  of  low  art  as  a  substratum.  They  tell  us  that 
beauty  does  not,  except  in  romances,  spring  up  out  of  low  con- 
ditions and  inferior  races.  No  more  does  art,  which  is  nothing 
if  not  perfectly  truthful  and  thoroughly  human,  rise  out  of 
tricky  handicrafts  and  a  slovenly  every-day  life. 

But  we  have  not  reached  a  full  conception  of  this  art  idea 
in  human  life  when  we  make  it  merely  an  incident  and  an 
appendage  to  use.  Beauty  does  not  disdain  to  contribute 
to  service,  but  that  is  out  of  grace  and  comity,  not  vassalage. 
In  order  to  secure  the  highest  favors  of  art,  we  must  cultivate 
it,  not  for  use,  or  pleasure,  or  ostentation,  but  for  its  own  sake. 
Now  I  am  aware  that  this  is  a  hard  saying,  and  if  I  did  not 
have  the  talk  all  to  myself,  if  this  were  a  debate  instead  of  a 
lecture  and  I  had  to  defend  my  positions  against  attack, 
this  would  certainly  be  the  point  of  danger.  If  a  man  devote 
his  life  to  the  pursuit  of  truth,  we  respect  him;  if  he  engage 
himself  to  the  service  of  morality,  we  honor  him;  but  if  he 
give  himself  up  to  art,  we  set  him  down  as  a  trifler.  We 
don't  give  him  the  credit  of  doing  a  man's  work  in  the  world, 
of  taking  any  share  of  the  burden  of  human  life  on  his 
shoulders.  In  other  words,  we  think  that  art  is  not,  in  itself, 
a  worthy  object  of  pursuit.  In  this  judgment  there  is  some- 
thing wholesome  and  manly.  Much  that  calls  itself  art  is 
mere  dawdling  with  colors  and  clay.  Probably  the  most 
arrant  nonsense  that  ever  has  been  uttered  in  human  language 
has  been  on  the  subject  of  art.  I  presume  we  all  chuckled 
over  that  story  of  Carlyle's  telling  his  host  at  dinner  that  he 
had  been  obliged  to  listen  for  an  hour  to  a  man  who  had 
talked  to  him  on  art,  and  now  he  begged  for  Heaven's  sake 
a  room  by  himself  and  a  pipe.  And  it  was  on  purpose  to 
prepare  for  these  objections  that  I  spent  so  much  time  in 


ART:   A  LECTURE  69 

the  early  part  of  this  lecture  in  settling  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  art.  Art  divorced  from  truth  and  from  morality  is 
the  contemptible  thing  which  it  is  so  often  represented  to  be; 
but  bear  in  mind  that  in  that  case  not  only  the  pursuit  and 
the  man  are  contemptible,  but  the  result  considered  merely 
as  art  is  also  contemptible.  On  a  low  intellectual  and  moral 
basis  you  can  not  rear  any  fair  superstructure  of  art.  A  great 
artist  must  be  a  great  man.  Leonardo  and  Michael  Angelo 
were  two  of  the  grandest  men  that  our  race  has  produced. 
With  what  seriousness,  we  may  say  even  solemnity,  was 
art  invested  in  their  eyes!  Was  any  anchoret  or  pietist  ever 
less  worldly  or  more  severe  with  himself  than  Michael  Angelo? 
The  moment  we  come  to  conceive  of  art  as  the  embodiment 
of  that  which  is  true  in  thought  and  that  which  is  good  in 
feeling  and  act,  we  rid  its  domain  of  all  these  fripperies  and 
these  trifling  prettinesses  which  are  but  its  caricature,  and 
we  recognize  the  lofty  purpose,  the  pure  majesty,  the  religious 
sanctity  of  true  art.  We  can  understand  that  apart  from 
all  the  gains  of  art,  commercial,  social,  patriotic,  religious 
even,  it  is  worthy  of  a  man,  of  the  truest  and  best  man  that 
lives,  to  cultivate  art  for  its  own  sake,  to  satisfy  this  inoorn 
craving  for  the  beautiful  by  putting  some  of  his  best  life 
into  art.  "  'Tis  to  create,  and  by  creating  live  a  being  more 
intense,  that  we  with  form  endue  our  fancy"  is  Byron's  idea 
of  art.  For  the  word  " intense,"  which  is  too  narrow,  let 
us  say  that  it  is  to  live  a  being  more  full,  more  complete, 
more  satisfying  that  we  give  form  to  fancy.  In  fine  the 
motive  to  art  is  to  satisfy  the  art  element  of  our  own  nature. 
God  made  us  all  potentially  artists.  He  put  into  us  the 
desire  to  create  the  beautiful.  When  we  repress  that  desire 
we  defraud  ourselves.  When  we  gratify  it,  we  add  to  our- 
selves something  that  of  right  belongs  to  us.  The  Irish- 
woman in  the  little  shanty  on  the  road  to  Mallet's  Bay  who 
every  summer  trains  her  scarlet-runner  bean  archwise  over 
her  humble  door,  and  the  great  master  who  painted  the 


70  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Transfiguration,  both  wrought  under  the  same  universal  and 
holy  impulse  to  create  the  beautiful. 

Bearing  in  mind  that  art  in  order  to  be  genuine  must  be 
pursued  for  its  own  sake,  and  not  for  any  incidental  benefits 
it  may  bring  with  it,  we  still  recognize  its  beneficent  offices 
in  every  department  of  life.  Passing  by  many  others  of 
which  I  should  like  to  speak,  let  us  look  at  its  office  as  consoler. 
Here  let  me  gratefully  refer  to  a  thought  of  the  Country  Parson 
in  the  essay  "Concerning  Tidiness."  The  thought  is  this: 
When  you  are  downcast  and  cannot  rally  yourself  by  your 
ordinary  restoratives,  just  go  and  make  something  tidy. 
Take  something  that  looks  just  as  you  feel,  forlorn  and  dismal, 
a  bit  of  garden  wall,  a  flower-bed,  a  room  in  your  house,  and 
work  away  at  it  till  you  make  it  comely  and  smiling,  and 
you  will  catch  the  smile  yourself.  Now  I  say,  that  is  good 
sound  philosophy.  It  is  not  merely  occupation  that  works 
the  change,  it  is  the  aspect  of  beauty  growing  under  your 
hand.  You  must  take  something  which  has  the  possibility 
of  art  in  it,  something  which  has  in  it  the  potency  of  a  bright 
feeling  that  shall  irradiate  your  gloom.  And  you  may  carry 
the  principle  far  above  this  point,  and  say  that  one  of  the 
noblest  functions  of  art  is  the  alleviation  of  sorrow.  Of 
course  here  art  means  not  the  enjoying  but  the  making  of 
beautiful  things.  The  real  is  forgotten  in  the  ideal.  Thought 
is  occupied;  counter  feelings  are  awakened;  aspiration  drives 
out  despair.  This  is  the  reason  why  women  ordinarily  endure 
sorrow  better  than  men;  they  turn  more  naturally  to  the 
resources  of  art.  A  woman  will  rise  up  from  some  great  sorrow, 
the  tears  still  in  her  eyes,  and  betake  herself  to  the  making 
of  some  beautiful  thing  according  to  her  capacity,  and  will 
live  down  her  grief.  A  man,  not  usually  having  such  aptitude 
for  art,  will  betake  himself  to  drinking,  or  some  other  stupefy- 
ing indulgence,  or  to  that  most  cowardly  of  crimes,  suicide. 
Think  of  what  art  did  for  Charles  Lamb  and  William  Cowper, 
who  in  the  daily  dread  of  insanity  and  the  nameless  horrors 


ART:  A  LECTURE  71 

that  hang  about  the  mere  thought  of  it,  yet  under  the  tutelage 
and  inspiration  of  art  lived  the  sweetest  and  most  graceful 
of  lives. 

Here  comes  in  opportunely  the  subject  of  Dress.  Some 
persons  value  themselves  highly  because  they  dress  shabbily 
and  because  they  scorn  others  for  dressing  well,  assuming 
that  the  love  of  dress  is  sheer  vanity.  But  there  is  a  more 
kindly  view  we  might  take  without  offending  sound  reason. 
We  can  give  and  receive  an  innocent  pleasure,  not  the  highest 
but  by  no  means  a  despicable  pleasure,  by  dressing  in  good 
taste.  It  is  permissible  to  gratify  one's  own  love  of  things 
pleasant  to  look  on  by  making  and  wearing  them.  It  is 
more  than  permissible,  it  is  commendable  to  wear  them  in 
order  to  please  others.  My  hostess  naturally  wants  her 
rooms  to  look  gay  and  her  table  to  look  attractive  to  her 
guests,  and  to  please  her  and  them,  I  will  wear  my  best.  "  Out 
into  the  outer  darkness,  and  serve  him  right"  we  say  of  the 
man  who  intruded  himself  among  the  wedding  guests  and 
had  not  on  a  wedding  garment.  It  is  the  art  element  in  the 
parlor  and  the  dining-room.  Of  course  it  may  be  carried 
to  a  mischievous  extreme;  what  good  thing  may  not  be? 

And  this  brings  me  to  say,  in  general  terms,  that  the  office 
of  the  art-element  in  life  is  to  idealize  it,  to  reduce  to  its 
lowest  possible  terms  the  gross  material  element  of  life,  partly 
by  subordinating  it,  partly  by  perfecting  its  processes,  and 
to  give  the  control  of  life  to  its  higher  and  finer,  its  spiritual 
elements.  Group  for  a  moment  in  your  imagination  all 
the  Fine  Arts  together,  Poetry  and  Music,  Painting  and 
Sculpture,  Architecture  and  Landscape  Gardening,  not 
omitting  the  humbler  guises  of  the  formative  and  decorative 
arts  in  household  and  other  uses,  and  ask  yourselves  the 
question,  What  is  this  one  principle  which  manifests  itself 
in  all  these  forms,  and  what  is  it  doing  for  man?  And  again, 
for  a  moment,  imagine  it  wholly  struck  out  from  the  life  of  man. 
Still  again,  imagine  that  this  our  American  people,  in  the 


72  THE  VERY  ELECT 

course   of   their   development   should,   without   losing   their 
practical  enterprise  and  skill,  come  to  give  the  art  element 
as  much  prominence  as  it  had  in  the  life  of  the  ancient  Greeks. 
Now  in  the  act  of  making  these  suppositions  and  asking  these 
questions,  we  come  to  see  how  potent  this  art  principle  is; 
how  different  human  life  would  be  without  it;  how  benign 
and  healthful  an  element  it  is  when  existing  in  due  harmony 
with  the  other  elements  of  man's  life;  and  how  fatal  to  national 
and  individual  character  and  growth  is  either  its  neglect  or 
its  perversion.     We  sometimes  say  of  a  man  that  he  has  no 
poetry  in  him;  or  we  vary  the  expression  and  say  of  him  that 
he  has  no  imagination,  or  no  romance.     What  we  mean  to 
deny  in  him  is  this  art-element,  this  tendency  to  see  things 
above  the  commonplace  and  beyond  the  actual.     It  is  equiv- 
alent to  saying  that  he  has  no  aspiration,  no  yearnings  after 
truer  and  nobler  things  than  he  has.     And  that  is  the  same 
as  saying  that  he  is  a  dull  mechanical  man,  a  man  without 
a  future.     Once  in  a  while  we  find  ourselves  beside  a  person, 
whose  influence  over  us  we  should  find  it  difficult  to  account 
for,  but  who  has  called  up  out  of  our  hearts  images,  hopes, 
longings  which  we  feel  to  be  ours  and  not  his,  and  yet  which 
we  never  had  been  conscious  of  before.     In  the  glow  of  our 
admiration  and  gratitude  we  ascribe  high  qualities  to  such 
a  man.     We  call  him  inspired;  the  ancients  called  him  divine. 
Perhaps  it  is  not  a  living  person  who  thus  stirs  and  inspires 
us;  it  may  be  only  some  work  of  his.     It  is  perhaps  oftener 
the  work  than  the  man  that  thus  affects  us,  but  it  is  the  man 
at  his  best  in  his  work;  it  is  art.     It  is  a  glimpse  of  perfection 
embodied  before  our  imagination.     It  may  be  embodied  in 
a  little  simple  ballad,  or  in  a  grand  epic;  it  may  stand  before 
us  complete  in  every  limb  and  feature,  or  so  mangled  by 
vandalism  as  to  be  a  mere  fragment;  it  may  be  historically 
inaccurate,  it  may  be  conventionally  improper;  it  may  be 
somewhat  rude  in  execution  and  very  faulty  in  many  details: 
yet  if  there  is  a  great  and  true  thought  in  it  and  a  pure  and 


ART:  A  LECTURE  73 

fine  and  loving  feeling,  such  as  that  thought  must  awaken 
in  a  noble  mind,  and  if  this  is  accessible  to  us  through  all 
the  rudeness  and  in  spite  of  all  the  minor  faults  and  mutila- 
tions, we  have  found  the  work,  we  have  the  man,  that  we 
are  all  eagerly  looking  for  up  and  down  the  world,  the  man, 
or  the  man's  work,  that  can  reveal  to  us  our  own  better  selves 
and  interpret  to  us  our  own  higher  aspiration.  Let  us  under- 
stand that  of  us  art  requires  something  more  than  that  we 
should  talk  learnedly  of  foreshortening  and  chiaroscuro, 
should  admire  Beethoven  and  praise  the  works  of  Pietro 
Perugino;  that  art  is  not,  as  so  many  suppose,  the  mere 
dandyism  of  culture.  Let  us  understand  that  art  has  soul 
in  it,  more  soul  and  a  higher  soul  than  any  other  object  of 
man's  pursuit  saving  only  its  true  yokefellows,  morals  and 
religion.  Let  us  understand  that  the  truest  and  highest  of 
all  works  of  art  is  a  perfect  human  life,  ennobled  by  high 
thinking,  inspired  by  beautiful  feeling;  and  that  every  other 
work  of  art  is  excellent  according  to  its  success  in  inspiring 
these  true  and  high  thoughts  and  these  beautiful  feelings 
in  other  lives,  and  so  reproducing  the  good  and  the  true 
through  the  beautiful. 


CHRISTIANITY  A  WORLD-WIDE  MOVEMENT 

AMONG  our  Lord's  sayings  respecting  himself  there  is  one 
which  is  significant  almost  beyond  all  the  rest:  "And  I,  if  I 
be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  myself." 
Separate  it  from  its  connection  with  his  other  sayings  and 
with  his  life,  and  it  would  seem  to  be  startling  and  audacious 
egotism.  Imagine  any  other  personage  in  history  uttering 
it,  and  it  would  seem  either  ludicrous  vanity  or  sheer  madness. 
But  read  in  this  gospel  narrative  it  seems  neither  audacious, 
nor  egotistic,  nor  even  startling.  It  appears  to  have  been 
uttered  in  perfect  calmness;  we  read  it  without  any  shock — 
almost  without  wonder.  It  does  not  seem  extravagant  for 
such  a  one  as  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  to  have  said  it.  It 
does  not  now  need  the  glance  over  subsequent  history,  making 
its  fulfillment  more  and  more  probable,  to  put  us  into  sympathy 
with  it.  We  find  it  inherently  credible,  and  even  probable, 
that  this  young  man,  standing  there  amid  a  small  group  of 
disciples  who  only  half  believed  in  him,  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  indifferent  or  hostile,  would,  as  time  went  on,  draw  all 
men  to  himself, — was  in  fact  then  and  there  starting  a  move- 
ment which  would  be  world-wide  in  its  reach  and  co-extensi  ve 
with  history  in  its  duration.  There  is,  then,  there  must  be, 
that  in  the  character  and  teaching  and  work  of  Jesus  which 
compels  our  assent  to  this  vast  claim,  to  this  magnificent  proph- 
ecy. What  it  is,  we  may  not  hope  fully  to  understand, 
much  less  to  put  into  statement;  but  we  may  perhaps  get 
glimpses  of  it  which  will  be  helpful  to  our  faith.  The  definite 
question  to  which  we  will  first  address  ourselves  is  this: 
What  gives  to  Christianity  as  a  religion  its  character  of  uni- 
versality, its  hold  upon  men  of  all  climes,  all  races,  all  ages? 

It  is  easy,  in  the  first  place,  to  see  why  no  one  of  the  other 
religions  of  the  world  could  be  a  universal  religion.  While 

74 


CHRISTIANITY  75 

we  can  be  thankful  that  God  hath  not  left  himself  without 
witness  in  the  various  religions  of  mankind,  we  can,  with  the 
utmost  breadth  of  charity,  discover  in  none  of  them  those 
germs  of  essential  and  universal  truth  which  could  be  vitalized 
and  expanded  into  a  religion  for  all  mankind.  They  are  all 
vitiated  by  some  taint  of  partiality  or  particularism.  Mo- 
hammedanism, Buddhism,  Confucianism,  while  all  contain 
some  truth  respecting  the  right  relations  of  man  to  God  and 
man  to  man,  all  have  wrought  into  them,  into  their  warp  and 
woof,  ideas  political  and  social,  philosophies,  cosmogonies, 
fictions,  framed  to  support  and  perpetuate  tribal  and  national 
institutions,  conditions  which  do  not  forbid  making  proselytes 
by  conquest  or  absorption  of  other  races  or  religions,  but  which 
admit  no  freedom  of  thought  or  capabilities  of  extension  be- 
yond certain  definite  limits. 

The  same  is  true  of  Judaism  in  its  earlier  stages.  Jehovah 
was  at  first  only  the  tribal  God  of  the  Hebrews.  The  children 
of  Israel  had  provisions  by  which  strangers  could  be  admitted 
to  the  privileges  of  the  national  cult,  but  that  Jehovah  should 
extend  his  protecting  sway  over  heathen  tribes  was  utterly 
abhorrent  to  them.  Not  till  late  in  their  history,  if  at  all, 
did  they  attain  to  the  conception  of  one  universal  truth  and 
life  for  all  mankind.  Even  the  apostles  found  it  hard  to  part 
with  the  idea  that  they  must  first  Judaize  before  they  could 
Christianize  the  world.  And  dare  we  say  that  the  Christian 
Church,  even  the  modern  Christian  Church,  has  wholly  freed 
itself  from  this  error  of  particularism?  Are  we  sure  that  we 
are  always  insisting  on  at  home,  and  sending  into  the  unevange- 
lized  world,  that  which  is  essential  and  universal  in  Chris- 
tianity and  not  that  which  is  provincial  and  temporary? 

But  waiving  for  a  moment  these  practical  questions,  let 
us  find  our  first  note  of  universality  in  true  Christianity  in 
the  thought  that  it  is  a  human  religion — that  is,  that  its  object 
is  the  perfection  of  the  human  nature  which  is  essentially  in 
man,  and  potentially  in  all  men,  that  nature  as  a  whole  and 


76  THE   VERY  ELECT 

including  all  that  it  involves.  If  we  ask,  what  wa§  in  the 
mind  of  God  as  set  forth  in  what  St.  Paul  calls  "the  gospel  of 
God  concerning  his  Son,  Jesus  Christ,"  I  think  something 
like  this  would  be  the  answer.  I  am  now  answering,  not  the 
question,  what  is  the  chief  end  of  man,  but  what  was  God's 
chief  end  in  the  incarnation:  the  perfection  of  humanity,  that 
every  man  should  be  perfect,  i.e.,  a  perfect  man,  in  Christ 
Jesus.  Christianity  begins  by  recognizing  the  divine  element 
in  humanity.  Man  is  man  and  not  an  inferior  being  because 
of  the  divine  in  him.  God  could  not  have  been  incarnate  in 
humanity  unless  humanity  had  partaken  of  the  divine  nature. 
What  angelic  nature  is,  or  super-angelic,  if  such  there  be,  we 
know  not,  and  are  not  deeply  interested  to  know,  for  we  never 
shall  be  angels — and  we  know  not  yet  what  man  is  capable 
of  being;  but  what  he  is  capable  of  being,  to  its  utmost  extent, 
Christ  aims  to  make  real.  Not  the  old  Adam  was,  but  the 
new  man  in  Christ  Jesus  will  be,  the  perfect  man;  and  when 
perfect  he  will  still  be  man — human  always — not  absorbed 
back  into  the  bosom  of  Deity  without  identity  or  conscious- 
ness— not  an  abstraction  without  body,  parts,  or  passions, 
without  desire  or  will;  but  human  always  and  everywhere, 
capable  of  all  human  joys,  endearments,  choices,  aspirations, 
endeavors.  To  be  a  Christian  is  to  be  truly  a  man  or  a  woman. 
To  be  more  and  more  of  a  man  or  a  woman  is  to  be  more  truly 
a  Christian.  When  some  unique  Christian  soul  attains  to 
greatness  in  thought  or  deed,  to  heroic  achievement  or  sacri- 
fice,— when  some  saintly  woman  radiates  a  divine  beauty  in 
character  or  life,  some  insincere  poet,  some  rhapsodist,  may 
call  these  traits  superhuman;  but  they  are  not  superhuman 
though  they  are  divine,  they  are  the  intimations  of  what 
humanity  can  be — they  are  human  nature  at  its  best  respond- 
ing to  a  breath  of  inspiration  from  the  Divine  Spirit. 

Now  Christianity  holds  as  a  fundamental  belief  that  all 
which  is  essentially  good  in  human  nature  is  potentially  in 
every  man,  of  whatever  clime,  or  time,  or  race.  The  doctrine 


CHRISTIANITY  77 

of  development,  that  is,  that  the  germ  contains  within  itself 
the  possibility  of  perfection  in  its  kind,  is  as  vital  to  Chris- 
tianity as  to  Science;  and  Christianity  maintains  that  every 
human  soul,  because  it  is  human,  contains  this  germ  of  infi- 
nite capabilities.  This  doctrine  was  beautifully  applied  by 
St.  Paul  to  the  condition  of  the  Roman  slave.  Art  thou  a 
bondman?  Care  not  for  it:  thou  art  God's  freeman.  Polit- 
ical status  does  not  affect  essential  humanity.  In  Christ 
there  is  no  bond  or  free,  Jew  or  Gentile — all  are  simply  men, 
and  all  are  truly  men.  It  was  for  a  long  time  a  matter  of 
doubt  in  some  quarters  whether  the  people  of  certain  degraded 
races  were  really  in  all  respects  human — whether  they  have 
the  same  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  as  the  superior  races. 
The  slaveholders  of  the  South  denied  the  humanity  of  the 
slaves.  The  Boers  in  South  Africa,  it  is  said,  refuse  to  recog- 
nize the  essential  humanity  of  the  Kaffirs.  But  a  missionary 
experience  now  almost  as  extensive  as  the  globe  confirms 
the  Christian  postulate  that  people  of  every  race,  however 
degraded,  are  redeemable  to  any  height  of  Christian  excellence. 
The  first  message  of  the  Gospel  to  every  people  is:  "You  are 
men;  and  because  you  are  men,  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
children  of  a  Heavenly  Father,  redeemed  by  the  Son  of  God 
who  gave  himself  for  all  men,  come  back  and  claim  your  in- 
heritance side  by  side  with  those  who  have  come  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God  before  you,  but  whose  right  to  be  there  is  not 
greater  than  your  own." 

Christianity,  secondly,  is  a  world-wide  force  because  it  is 
a  vital  religion, — because  it  interests  itself  most  of  all  with 
life —  with  human  life  in  its  largest  sense.  It  is  the  religion 
of  life — not  of  forms  and  ceremonies — not  of  moods  and  ecsta- 
sies— not  of  apathies  and  frenzies, — but  of  health,  of  sanity, 
of  activity,  of  enthusiasm  but  not  of  fanaticism,  of  sobriety 
without  gloom,  of  enjoyment  free  from  self-reproach.  It 
answers  the  great  cry  of  the  human  soul,  "more  life,  and  fuller, 
that  we  want."  And  so  Jesus  said,  "  I  am  come  that  they  may 


78  THE  VERY  ELECT 

have  life" — abundant  life — not  quietude,  not  escape  from  the 
storm  and  stress  of  existence  into  a  haven  of  Nirvana;  not 
escape  from  pain,  not  mere  passive  enjoyment,  sensuous,  or 
intellectual,  or  spiritual;  but  life,  freedom,  movement,  activity, 
achievement,  growth.  Christianity  offers  great  tasks  and 
glorious  rewards  to  the  intellect.  It  does  not,  as  do  some  re- 
ligions, rob  the  intellect  of  its  most  precious  right, — that  peril- 
ous but  inestimable  right  of  seeing  things  as  they  really  are. 
There  has  always  been  an  order  of  mind  which  craves  for  the 
settlement  of  truth  by  authority — by  some  one  who  will  say, 
and  who  has  the  right  to  say:  "This  is  right;  let  this  end  all 
doubt  and  all  thinking" — an  order  of  mind  which  has  its 
rightful  home  not  in  Christianity  but  in  some  religion  which 
rests  on  the  will  and  force  of  a  dominant  caste.  Christianity 
lets  no  human  authority  intervene  between  the  soul  and  God. 
Authority  has  to  do  with  conduct.  Rightful  authority  may 
rightfully  command  conduct:  it  cannot  compel  belief.  Christ 
said  to  the  disciples,  and  says  to  us,  "The  Spirit  will  guide  you 
into  all  truth  and  show  you  things  to  come."  Truth  comes 
by  guidance  and  inspiration,  not  by  authority.  The  Spirit 
will  not  dictate  the  truth  to  you,  like  a  dull  lecturer  to  his 
class,  but  will  guide  you  into  it.  He  will  show  you  the  truth 
but  you  must  see  it  for  yourself.  Christianity  inspires  in 
us  the  desire  for  more  and  more  truth,  gives  divine  guidance 
in  the  search,  but  leaves  to  us  the  joys  and  pains  and  perils 
of  the  attempt,  and  the  thrills  and  exultations  of  discovery. 
It  gives  us  certain  great  and  fundamental  truths  as  solid  ground 
to  stand  upon,  sunlight  above  and  harvests  of  plenty  all  around 
for  the  sustenance  of  our  common  life;  but  it  also  gives  us  a 
sky  studded  with  innumerable  worlds — worlds  made  and  worlds 
in  the  making — and  says  to  us  "here  also  is  intelligence,  here 
also  is  law,  here  also  is  God.  Wonder,  study,  interpret,  adore." 
No  religion,  no  type  of  Christianity  if  such  there  be,  which 
pretends  to  settle  by  authority  the  great  truths  of  the  spiritual 
life,  or  which  makes  some  priestly  caste  its  guardian  and  dis- 


CHRISTIANITY  79 

penser,  which  assumes  that  the  little  we  know  is  all  that  can 
be  known  of  the  greatest  things  in  the  universe,  can  be  a  world 
religion.  Christianity  is  no  such  religion.  It  is  much  more 
than  a  philosophy — but  it  is  a  philosophy,  a  philosophy  of  the 
Universe:  it  makes  its  votaries  philosophers,  i.e.,  lovers  of 
truth,  thinkers,  fearless  but  devout  thinkers  on  the  works  and 
ways  and  Word  of  God,  and  it  holds  before  the  devout  philo- 
sophic mind  the  prospect  of  truths  even  more  noble  and  glo- 
rious waiting  to  be  discovered. 

Again,  Christianity  is  a  universal  religion  because  it  fosters 
the  universal  human  affections.  It  is  as  far  as  possible  from 
being  an  ascetic  religion.  It  does  not  inculcate  a  life  of  re- 
pression and  restraint.  The  pietism  which  takes  on  this 
form  misrepresents  Christianity.  In  a  noble,  if  slightly 
extravagant,  burst  of  enthusiasm,  Phillips  Brooks,  in  one  of 
his  sermons,  exclaims  that  Christianity  so  far  from  favoring 
a  life  of  self-denial  enjoins  a  life  of  self-indulgence,  meaning 
of  course,  a  life  in  which  all  the  desires,  affections  and  activities 
of  the  soul  have  room  for  free  and  full  development.  Chris- 
tianity reveals  God,  the  Being  who  represents  to  us  all  per- 
fection, not  in  terms  of  force  as  the  Almighty,  not  in  terms  of 
the  intellect  as  the  all-wise,  but  in  terms  of  the  affections. 
God  is  a  Father;  God  is  love;  and  thereby  says  to  all  God's 
children,  let  life  be  to  you  love,  faith,  trust,  gratitude,  devotion. 
And  when  Christianity  has  had  free  course  it  has  developed 
this  type  of  character — a  character  rich  in  all  the  constituent 
universal  human  affections.  If  in  its  perversions  it  has  been 
caricatured  by  the  ascetics,  by  the  hermits  and  anchorites, 
by  St.  Anthony  and  St.  Simeon,  in  its  truer  forms  it  has  blos- 
somed out  into  the  sweetest  family  life,  the  noblest  friendships, 
the  most  sublime  devotions.  The  great  classic  apotheosizing 
the  affections  was  not  written  by  Anacreon  or  by  Horace  but 
by  St.  Paul. 

In  thus  addressing  itself  to  the  natural  human  affections, 
Christianity  allies  itself  with  that  part  of  man's  nature  which 


80  THE  VERY  ELECT 

is  most  constant  and  most  permanent.  The  most  primitive 
and  the  most  degraded  men  have  some  human  affections  which 
can  be  reached  through  Christian  appeals,  and  the  men  of 
highest  culture  retain  under  cover  it  may  be  of  silence  and 
reserve  the  natural  feelings  of  their  kind.  Perhaps  there 
will  always  be  a  few  who  will  find  fascination  in  a  religion  which 
makes  a  merit  of  mortifying  the  God-implanted  desires  and 
affections  of  humanity  and  cultivating  an  impassive,  stolid 
temper  of  mind  which  they  will  call  piety,  but  the  religion 
which  appeals  to  and  satisfies  universal  human  nature  must, 
as  Christianity  does,  inculcate  and  nurture  a  large,  rich  and 
full  affectional  life. 

Again,  the  life  nurtured  by  Christianity  is  a  life  of  action. 
The  healthy  human  spirit  always  and  everywhere  leaps  up 
in  response  to  those  stirring  words  of  our  Lord,  "The  Father 
worketh  hitherto  and  I  work."  A  new  dynamic  impulse 
has  come  into  our  conception  of  God  with  the  revival  and  em- 
phasis of  the  doctrine  of  an  imminent  deity — a  personal  God 
ever  present  and  ever  active  in  all  the  processes  of  universal 
life.  In  some  of  the  earlier  ages  of  Christianity  and  again  in 
the  eighteenth  century  the  ideal  Christian  life  took  on  the  form 
of  dreamy  mysticism.  Holiness  was  equivalent  to  passive- 
ness  in  the  hands  of  God.  The  true  life  was  a  life  of  contem- 
plation— of  submission — of  patient  waiting  for  ecstasy.  This 
type  of  religion  drove  many  into  disgust  with  all  religion,  and 
brought  on  the  reaction  known  as  muscular  Christianity. 
The  lesson  of  it  is  that  the  Christianity  which  will  draw  all 
men  to  Christ  is  a  Christianity  which  makes  room  for  the 
joyful  exercise  of  all  man's  powers  and  activities.  Its  out- 
come is  what  we  call  Christian  civilization,  with  all  its  mani- 
fold and  multiform  outgoings.  The  religion  for  mankind 
ought  to  do  in  this  regard  what  Christianity  actually  does 
— it  ought  by  its  natural  operations  to  produce  arts,  inven- 
tions, great  cities,  navies,  commerce,  swift  transportation, 
lightning  messages  of  intelligence,  libraries,  universities, 


CHRISTIANITY  81 

splendid  architecture,  magnificent  churches,  noble  temples 
of  justice,  all  in  this  kind  that  the  nineteen  Christian  centuries 
have  produced  and  all  that  the  coming  Christian  centuries 
will  produce.  If  Christianity  had  been  laggard  in  respect 
to  these  great  productions  of  human  genius  and  enterprise, 
and  had  left  it  to  some  pagan  civilization  to  surpass  it  in 
these  achievements,  Christianity  would  have  been  discredited 
in  the  judgment  of  mankind  and  Christ  would  not  draw  all 
men  to  himself. 

This  life  of  intellect,  affection  and  action  which  Christianity 
begets  and  fosters,  it  commends  to  the  favor  of  all  men  by 
the  manifestations  it  makes  of  itself  here  and  now.  It  has 
the  promise  of  the  life  that  now  is,  when  men  can  see  its 
nature  and  fruits,  and  forecast  its  further  development  in 
the  life  to  come.  Under  the  baneful  influences  of  heathen 
political  and  social  systems,  life  is  so  hard  and  wretched 
that  the  thought  of  a  future  life  is  only  a  terror.  Some 
missionaries  tell  us  they  dare  not  preach  eternal  life  until 
the  thought  of  life  itself  is  made  more  tolerable,  and  Chris- 
tianity confers  this  boon  upon  human  thought  of  the  future. 
It  creates  a  life  that  is  worth  living,  and  then  says,  "it  hath 
not  entered,  and  could  not  enter,  into  the  heart  of  man  to 
conceive  what  life  hereafter  shall  be;  from  the  lowest  depths 
of  life  to  this,  judge  what  may  be  the  heights  of  life  beyond 
this." 

There  are  many  other  attributes  of  Christianity  which 
constitute  its  fitness  to  be  the  world's  religion;  e.  g.,  its 
emphasis  of  human  freedom,  leading  to  the  largest  and  richest 
social  development,  to  democracy  in  government  and  spon- 
taneity in  all  communal  life,  secular  and  religious — its  toler- 
ation of  wide  differences  in  individual  and  national  character 
unifying  all  in  its  comprehensive  humanity,  thus  initiating 
and  favoring  movements  like  those  which  have  produced 
international  law  and  are  tending  towards  universal  peace 
and  good-will. 


82  THE  VERY  ELECT 

But  there  is  time  now  to  mention  only  one  more  of  these 
essential  characteristics,  namely,  that  Christianity  has  its 
origin,  its  inspiration  and  its  power  in  a  universal  personality. 
Christianity  is  not  a  book  religion.  The  Mohammedans  are 
wont  to  say  that  their  religion  and  ours  are  the  two  great  book 
religions.  But  Christianity  is  not  essentially  a  book  religion. 
It  has  a  book  which  is  to  it  unspeakably  precious.  Its  life 
is  bound  up  with  the  history  of  that  book.  It  contains  its 
charter  and  its  laws.  But  that  book  is  not  the  cause  of 
Christianity  but  its  product — just  as  Magna  Chart  a  and 
and  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  were  produced  by, 
and  did  not  produce,  the  spirit  of  liberty.  And  Christianity 
is  all  the  time  producing  new  books,  embodying  and  trans- 
mitting its  life;  or  if  not  new  books,  new  booklets;  not  new 
Gospels,  but  new  prophecies,  new  psalms,  new  epistles,  with 
an  inspiration  inferior  both  in  kind  and  degree,  but  itill  an 
inspiration  from  one  and  the  same  spirit  of  all  truth.  But 
the  power  which  informs  Christianity  and  makes  it  what 
it  is  and  gives  it  universality  and  victory,  is  not  the 
power  of  a  book,  not  even  of  the  Book,  but  the  power 
of  personality,  of  a  divine  human  personality,  the  power 
of  the  personal  Jesus.  Christianity  is  essentially  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  his  own  assertion:  "I  will  draw  all  men 
unto  myself."  If  all  the  essential  doctrines  of  Christianity 
had  been  given  to  the  world  in  abstract  forms,  impersonally, 
anonymously,  would  they  have  drawn  men  to  themselves? 
It  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  say  that  most  of  these  teachings 
considered  as  bare  ethical  precepts  are  not  new  to  Christianity. 
That  which  made  them  really  new  and  gave  them  vitality  and 
momentum  was  the  personality  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that 
which  gives  them  equal  vitality  and  momentum  everywhere 
in  the  world  is  what  I  have  ventured  to  call  the  universal 
personality  of  Jesus.  All  other  men  have  their  distinctive 
notes  of  nativity.  Socrates  is  essentially  Greek — Augustine, 
Roman — Luther,  German — Paul  is  a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews. 


CHRISTIANITY  83 

But  Jesus  is  not  Hebrew.  Take  out  the  little  touches  and 
accessories  which  the  evangelists  have  added  and  there 
is  nothing  Hebrew  attaching  to  him.  When  some  recent 
painters  have  given  his  countenance  a  Hebrew  cast  we  all 
condemn  and  almost  resent  the  suggestion.  The  faces  most 
significant  to  us  are  those  that  have  neither  the  Italian  nor 
the  German  nor  the  Jewish  type,  but  the  human  in  its  ideal 
form,  and  all  are  failures  because  the  ideal  of  the  painter  is 
so  far  below  the  ideal  of  the  evangelists.  By  virtue  of  this 
human  personality,  divine  though  human  and  all  the  more 
human  because  divine,  Christianity  touchf  •>,  quickens,  draws 
all  men.  From  Gibbon  to  the  latest  Philosophy  of  history, 
every  attempt  to  explain  history  without  making  Christ  the 
supreme  force  in  it  is  a  failure,  and  every  attempt  to  set  forth 
the  potency  of  Jesus  Christ  in  history  by  making  him  only  a 
unique  and  exalted  man  is  a  failure.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
all  the  best  thinkers  of  all  schools  in  our  time  have  abandoned 
this  attempt.  The  only  question  that  now  divides  these 
schools  is  the  relation  of  the  divine  and  human  elements 
by  all  admitted  to  be  blended  in  this  personality.  Through 
all  and  above  all  the  differences  of  school  and  sects  this  one 
vital  fact  asserts  and  maintains  itself.  To  carry  Christianity 
to  a  people  to  whom  it  is  new  is  to  carry  Jesus  Christ.  All 
the  pure  ethics  and  noble  philosophy  which  Christianity 
contains  would  be  powerless  to  regenerate  heathendom 
without  him  in  whom  it  is  all  centred  and  by  whom  it  is  all 
made  real  and  vital.  And  this  I  say  is  what  more  than  all 
else  fits  Christianity  to  be  the  religion  of  all  mankind.  Jesus 
as  a  man,  as  a  divine  man,  as  a  friend,  as  a  Redeemer,  as  a 
Saviour,  appeals  to  all  men,  because  the  human  personality 
of  him  meets,  satisfies,  draws,  persuades,  assimilates  the 
personality  which  is  in  all  men.  As  Harnack  has  beautifully 
said,  Jesus  teaches  his  great  truths  to  men  in  the  language 
which  a  mother  uses  to  her  child,  in  the  universal  language 
of  the  human  heart.  How  much  more  human,  more  easy 


84  THE  VERY  ELECT 

to  comprehend  and  get  into  sympathy  with,  is  Jesus  in  his 
discourses  and  his  prayers,  than  is  Peter  or  Paul,  Augustine 
or  Luther,  or  any  Father  of  the  Church  ancient  or  modern! 
And  yet  the  Christian  of  highest  attainments  in  thought 
and  life  feels  sure  that  beyond  him  there  can  be  no  height 
of  morality  or  spirituality.  As  Goethe  has  finely  said: 
"  Though  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  culture  of  the  world 
progresses,  and  the  human  mind  expands  as  much  as  it  will, 
beyond  the  grandeur  and  moral  elevation  of  Christianity 
as  it  sparkles  and  shines  in  the  Gospels  the  human  mind 
will  not  advance." 

If  then  Christianity  is  the  one  and  only  religion  adapted 
to  the  human  nature  which  is  in  all  mankind,  and  is  therefore 
the  rightful  heritage  of  all  mankind,  the  Christian  Church 
to  which  has  been  entrusted  this  legacy  of  Christ  to  the 
world,  has  certain  obligations  which  it  becomes  the  Church 
deeply  to  consider. 

First,  the  Church  is  bound  to  have  faith  in  Christianity 
— a  faith  complete,  utter,  unassailable,  and  therefore  calm, 
patient,  charitable.  Such  faith  it  never  yet  has  had.  The 
so-called  ages  of  faith  in  Church  History  were  times  when 
the  Church  depended  on  penal  terrors  for  maintaining  what 
it  held  to  be  truth, — not  on  the  assent  of  the  free  human 
thought  and  will.  Alarms  for  the  safety  of  the  truth  leading 
to  persecutions  and  violence  for  error  evince  a  feeble  confidence 
in  the  truth  itself.  How  many  times  has  the  Church  cried 
out:  "If  this  error  is  allowed  a  hearing  it  will  br'ng  a  fatal 
hurt  upon  the  Church,"  instead  of  saying:  "If  this  counsel 
be  of  men  it  will  surely  come  to  naught."  If  Christianity 
is  a  world  religion  it  will  bring  many  surprises  to  those  who 
dwell  in  its  provinces  and  whose  views  of  it  are  therefore 
provincial.  Would  it  not  be  well  for  us  all  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  we  are  by  our  necessary  limitations  more  or 
less  provincial,  while  Christianity  itself  is  continental  and 
cosmopolitan?  Is  it  not  a  confession  of  feeble  faith  to  cry 


CHRISTIANITY  85 

out:  "If  this  or  that  view  of  Scripture  or  of  a  part  of  Scrip- 
ture be  permitted,  if  this  or  that  new  view  escape  condem- 
nation in  a  heresy  trial,  all  is  lost"?  Let  us  have  such  faith 
in  Christianity  itself  that  we  shall  be  able  to  meet  new  truth 
and  new  error  with  calm  confidence  that  truth  will  be  seen 
to  be  truth  and  error  to  be  error,  and  that  the  Church  and 
the  truth  will  prevail. 

Secondly,  we  should  let  the  divine  power  which  is  in  Chris- 
tianity develop  itself  in  its  own  natural  way.  The  nature 
of  Christianity  is  not  a  Hebrew  nature  as  the  early  disciples 
thought  it  to  be — nor  a  Greek  nature  as  the  Gnostics  thought 
— nor  a  Roman  nature  as  Augustine  thought — nor  an  Angli- 
can nature,  nor  a  Puritan  nature,  as  some  of  us  may  be  inclined 
to  think.  It  has  its  own  nature — a  divine-human  nature, 
slowly  developing  as  it  finds  the  right  environment  here  and 
there,  toward  the  perfect  humanity,  the  type  of  which  it 
holds  in  its  own  bosom.  Within  this  all-inclusive  type  it 
has  many  varieties — many  as  yet  unknown,  undreamed  of. 
God  forbid  that  we  should  wish  to  make  all  types  and  all 
varieties  conform  to  our  own  or  to  any  known  form.  It  is 
one  of  the  glorious  dreams,  hopes  rather  of  the  Christian 
imagination,  that  among  the  undeveloped  races  which  Chris- 
tianity is  yet  to  dominate,  will  arise  styles  of  Christian  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  of  social  and  political  life,  of  arts  and 
institutions,  which  will  beggar  and  shame  all  the  best  in  their 
kind  that  man  has  yet  attained  or  known.  Let  us  give  the 
vital  Christian  principle  full  scope  to  grow  and  blossom  under 
God's  sunshine  and  the  Holy  Spirit's  culture  as  seemeth 
good  to  him  who  has  made  men  of  different  climes  and  races 
such  that  they  will  be  eternally  different  and  yet  will  be  all 
one  in  him. 

And  finally,  the  Church  is  under  the  most  imperative  and 
urgent  obligation  to  plant  the  seeds  of  Christianity  every- 
where among  mankind.  When  it  is  said  that  the  nations 
already  have  religions  that  are  indigenous  and  therefore 


86  THE  VERY  ELECT 

adapted  to  their  needs,  that  Christianity  is  an  alien  and 
exotic  religion  that  has  to  be  forced  upon  them,  the  answer 
is  that  Christianity  is  not  a  Jewish  or  Gentile  religion — not 
an  oriental  or  occidental  religion — not  a  primitive  or  transi- 
tional religion — but  the  one  human,  universal  religion,  good 
for  all,  equally  good  for  all,  like  wheat  for  food  and  water  for 
drink — that  to  defraud  any  people  of  it,  or  withhold  it  from 
any  people,  is  to  deprive  them  of  what  belongs  to  them  as 
men,  as  an  essential  part  of  their  heritage  as  children  of 
God — that  to  keep  Christianity  as  the  exclusive  possession 
of  the  so-called  Christian  peoples,  is  to  impoverish  the  Chris- 
tian Church  among  these  peoples,  to  narrow  Church  life,  to 
delimit  Christian  sympathy,  and  confine  both  individual  and 
social  Christianity  utterly.  By  every  consideration  of  pru- 
dence, of  obligation  for  trusts  committed,  of  love  for  our  race 
and  kind,  of  interest  in  human  progress,  above  all  of  loyal 
devotion  to  h  m  who  was  lifted  up  from  the  earth  that 
he  might  draw  all  men  to  himself,  the  Church  is  bound  by 
an  obligation  which  grows  stronger  and  more  pressing  as  the 
Christian  years  go  by,  to  go  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   INFLUENCE   OF   LITERARY 
STUDIES 

I  PURPOSE  to  discuss  this  question — and  I  wish  I  were  sure 
of  making  the  discussion  as  interesting  to  you  as  I  know  the 
question  itself  is — How  does  the  purely  literary  spirit  stand 
related  to  the  religious  spirit,  and  specifically  to  the  spirit 
of  Christianity?  I  shall  put  to  Literature  the  same  question 
that  is  so  often  in  our  day  put  to  Science:  What  is  its  attitude 
towards  Spiritual  Religion?  And  I  regard  this  question  as 
not  only  more  novel  but  more  important  than  the  other — 
more  important,  indeed,  than  the  whole  series  of  questions, 
challenging  in  the  name  of  religion,  now  Science,  now  Philoso- 
phy, now  the  Fine  Arts — inasmuch  as  the  spirit  of  Literature 
is  much  more  pervasive,  reaches  and  influences  a  far  greater 
number  of  minds,  than  Science,  Philosophy,  and  Art  combined. 
No  other  evidence  of  this  need  be  offered  than  the  well-known 
fact  that  Science  and  Philosophy  have  to  borrow  the  charm  of 
Literature  to  gain  the  public  attention.  If  Science  had  to 
make  its  way  in  the  world  through  scientific  channels  only,  it 
would  never  get  far  from  the  laboratories  and  lecture-rooms 
that  produced  it:  but  having  succeeded  in  getting  into  the 
mail-routes  of  literature,  it  finds  its  way  into  every  hamlet 
and  home  of  the  land.  If  the  scientists  and  the  philoso- 
phers of  England  and  America  were  to  become  infidels,  every 
one  of  them,  it  would,  without  the  help  of  literature,  take 
generations  to  indoctrinate  any  large  portion  of  the  English- 
speaking  people  into  sympathy  with  them.  But  suppose 
the  literary  men  of  these  two  countries  to  be  perverted  to 
atheism — as  this  class  were  in  France  just  before  the  French 
Revolution — and  society  would  feel  the  baleful  effects  imme- 
diately. 

87 


88  THE  VERY  ELECT 

To  put  the  question  over  again  in  a  concrete  form,  let  me 
state  it  thus:  Bring  up  a  young  man  upon  Homer  and  Sopho- 
cles, Virgil  and  Tacitus,  Dante  and  Goethe,  upon  Chaucer, 
Shakespeare,  Addison,  and  Burke,  upon  Longfellow,  Emerson 
and  Lowell,  and  in  what  attitude  have  you  put  him  toward 
God,  and  toward  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ? 

In  order  to  clear  the  way  for  a  satisfactory  answer  to  this 
question,  let  me  ask  your  assent  to  two  obviously  fair  rulings 
in  the  case.  First,  in  order  to  judge  of  the  religious  tendencies 
of  literature,  you  shall  make  your  appeal  to  books  and  not 
to  the  lives  of  their  authors.  In  society,  the  man  is  every- 
thing and  his  book  nothing.  He  may  have  written  a  treatise 
which  honors  and  promotes  every  virtue  under  heaven,  but 
that  does  not  discharge  for  him  the  simplest  personal  obli- 
gation, or  make  amends  for  the  smallest  wrong.  In  literature, 
however,  the  man  is  lost  out  of  sight  behind  his  book,  and  he 
stands  the  mere  shadow  of  a  name.  His  personal  qualities, 
his  amiability  or  moroseness,  his  morality  or  immorality,  his 
religion  or  the  want  of  it,  except  so  far  as  they  find  actual 
expression  in  his  book  and  are  a  part  of  it,  are  no  concern  of 
the  readers,  and  do  not  affect  the  total  impression  save  in 
the  very  slightest  degree.  Some  of  the  most  holy  of  unin- 
spired strains  were  written  by  men  of  unholy  lives.  He  who 
would  expunge  from  even  sacred  literature  the  productions  of 
all  men  who  were  chargeable  with  immorality,  must  begin 
with  the  Psalms  of  David,  and  go  through  the  shelves  of  his 
library,  robbing  himself  of  one  after  another  of  the  most 
precious  of  his  religious  treasures.  But  practically  no  man 
thinks  of  doing  this.  Literature  has  a  life  of  its  own  independ- 
ent of  the  lives  of  its  authors,  and  is  judged  according  to 
its  deeds,  not  theirs.  And  herein  lies  a  profound  truth  which 
has  an  important  bearing  upon  this  whole  discussion.  Lit- 
erature is  not  the  production  solely  of  the  men  who  indite  it. 
It  was  Scotch  piety  that  produced  the  Cottar's  Saturday 
Night:  Burns  merely  wrote  it.  When  the  Psalmist  sang, 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES          89 

"By  the  rivers  of  Babylon  we  sat  down  and  wept,"  it  was  the 
national  experience  of  sorrow,  the  yearning  of  all  Israel  for 
Zion,  that  flung  themselves  upon  the  Psalmist's  harp.  And  so 
in  a  more  or  less  literal  sense,  all  literature  is  impersonal  as 
regards  its  authors,  and  has  a  personality  of  its  own.  My 
stipulation  is  simply  that  it  be  judged  as  all  responsible 
personality  is  judged — according  to  its  own  merits  or  demerits. 
We  might  go  farther  and  say  that  Literature  is  in  part  the 
production  of  those  who  read  it,  that  is,  that  those  who  adopt 
it  and  give  it  fame  are  in  part  contributors  to  its  power. 
The  poetry  of  Keble,  for  instance,  owes  more  to  its  adoption 
by  a  certain  branch  of  the  Anglican  Church  as  the  expression 
of  its  religious  faith  and  hope,  than  to  its  intrinsic  merit, 
considerable  as  that  is. 

(  My  second  point  is  that  the  religious  influence  of  literature 
shall  not  be  tested  by  the  proportion  of  the  professedly  reli- 
gious element  in  it.  A  book  may  be  full  of  religious  terms  and 
phrases  and  yet  have  a  decidedly  irreligious  tendency.;  A  book 
may  not  have  a  single  religious  term  or  phrase  or  reference 
however  remote,  and  yet  leave  upon  the  reader's  mind  a 
friendly  influence  toward  religion.  We  believe  that  God  is 
in  the  Constitution,  as  he  is  in  the  Book  of  Esther,  though  his 
name  is  not  there.  The  religious  influence  of  many  professedly 
religious  books  is  so  marred  by  ungracious,  unloving  and  even 
untrue  statements  of  the  truth,  that  really  one  might  be 
pardoned  for  wishing  at  times  that  religious  instruction  and 
religious  influence  should  be  sought  only  from  that  one  book 
whose  statements  of  the  truth  are  always  true;  always 
gracious,  even  when  severe;  always  sincere,  even  when  most 
gracious.  I  would  rather  see  in  the  hands  of  a  young  person 
whose  mind  is  yet  unsettled  on  the  great  questions  of  religious 
duty,  one  of  the  many  literary  works  whose  influence  is  intel- 
lectually ennobling  and  morally  wholesome,  which  leaves  the 
mind  and  heart  in  a  susceptible  and  genial  condition,  disposed 
to  receive  impressions  directly  from  the  Word  and  the  Spirit 


90  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  God,  than  any  of  that  large  number  of  much  lauded  reli- 
gious books  whose  harshness  repels,  or  whose  sharpness  dis- 
gusts, the  young  heart  into  an  attitude  of  antagonism  to 
religion  itself.  '  The  chilling  rigor  of  religious  formalism,  the 
rough  blasts  of  religious  controversy,  only  make  the  young 
man  gird  more  closely  around  him  the  cloak  of  prejudice  which 
protects  him  from  religious  impressions.  But  in  the  sunshine 
of  the  humanity,  the  gentleness,  the  charity  of  literary  studies, 
prejudice  is  flung  aside,  the  heart  opens  to  receive  all  genial 
influences;  and  now  the  sentence  of  Scripture,  or  the  warm 
word  from  some  loving  soul,  wins  the  easily  persuaded  soul  to 
reflection  and  to  faith.  I  do  not  mean  to  disparage  religious 
reading.  I  would  do  all  in  my  power  to  uphold  it  as  a  means 
of  grace.  I  am  informed  that  more  religious  books  are  bought, 
and  I  suppose  read,  by  English-speaking  people,  than  books 
of  all  other  kinds  combined,  and  I  rejoice  at  it;  that  is,  I 
rejoice  that  there  is  such  an  appetite  for  religious  literature; 
but  I  rejoice  that  it  does  not  fall  to  my  lot  to  select  and  recom- 
mend the  books.  If  I  were  asked  to  name  the  religious  books 
which  I  could  recommend  to  young  men  with  perfect  confidence 
in  the  truth  of  their  doctrine  and  the  sanity  of  their  influence, 
I  think  I  could  count  them  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  If, 
however,  I  had  the  opportunity  of  commending  to  them  books 
to  be  read  as  literature,  which  without  aiming  to  impart 
either  instruction  or  influences  distinctively  religious,  should 
yet  bring  the  mind  and  heart  into  a  more  tender  and  receptive 
condition  for  the  Word  and  Spirit  of  God  to  work  upon,  I 
could  easily  fill  the  shelves  of  a  library, — for  I  should  find 
myself  naming  one  after  another  the  great  literary  works  of 
the  successive  eras  and  the  various  nations  of  mankind. 
And  this  brings  me  to  the  point  on  which  I  shall  mainly 
depend  in  my  advocacy  of  this  cause — namely  that  literature 
is  the  expression  and  embodiment  of  that  which  is  best  in 
humanity.  The  best  work  of  the  human  race,  its  noblest 
conceptions,  its  loftiest  enthusiasm,  its  holiest  affections,  are 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY   STUDIES         91 

enshrined  in  its  literature.  Not  that  the  literary  men  of  the 
race  have  done  all  the  great  thinking  and  lived  all  the  fine 
living  of  the  race;  by  no  means, — but  that  all  the  high  think- 
ing of  all  the  great  thinkers,  and  the  grand  action  of  all  the 
heroes  and  heroines  of  our  race,  have  been  gathered  into  its 
literature.  The  Iliad  is  the  grandest  epic  and  Homer  is  the 
greatest  epic  poet,  because  he  has  conveyed  into  language 
more  than  all  other  poets,  of  that  magnanimity,  that  uncon- 
scious greatness  of  soul,  which  whole  generations  had  toilfully 
wrought  out  of  personal  lives.  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest 
dramatist  because  he  surpassed  every  other  human  being  in 
discerning  the  potential  but  undeveloped  capacities  of  human 
life.  For  the  best  literature  does  not  content  itself  with  repro- 
ducing the  actual  best  that  has  been  in  humanity,  but  forecasts 
the  best  that  is  wrapped  up  in  its  infinite  possibilities.  The 
reason  for  the  existence  of  literature  is  the  satisfaction  man- 
kind takes  in  the  contemplation  of  its  own  capabilities. 

It  is  held  by  the  best  naturalists  that  the  true  nature  of  a 
thing  is  its  perfection;  that  the  natural  apple  as  we  call  it 
is  the  degenerate  offspring,  not  the  parent,  of  the  nobler 
fruit;  that  the  rose  reveals  its  nature,  not  in  the  single  wild 
rose  of  the  hillside,  but  in  the  more  nearly  perfect  rose  of 
the  garden.  Now  literature  reveals  the  true  nature  of  man 
in  the  same  way  that  a  Belgian  rose-garden  reveals  the  nature 
of  the  rose.  Literature  is  the  rose-garden  of  humanity. 
The  choicest  specimens  it  produces  here  and  there  are  trans- 
planted hither,  and  cultivated  up  to  the  highest  attainable 
perfection.  In  literature  man  is  greater  and  wiser  and  purer 
and  nobler  than  real  men  are  in  actual  life.  Socrates  is 
doubtless  wiser  in  Plato  than  the  man  himself  was.  Chris- 
tianity, however  weak  it  may  be  in  the  lives  of  its  professors, 
is  grand  and  ever  triumphant  not  only  in  the  Gospels  and 
Epistles  of  its  inspired  founders,  but  in  its  hymns  and  anthems, 
and  in  its  devotional  literature,  which  is  its  true  anthology. 
If  to  this  it  is  replied  that  while  literature  is  the  storehouse 


92  THE  VERY   ELECT 

of  the  best  produced  by  humanity,  this  humanity  is  a  fallen 
humanity,  and  that  literature  but  partakes  of  the  imperfect 
nature  of  its  source; — I  answer  that,  though  a  fallen,  it  is  not 
an  abandoned  humanity,  but  one  in  and  with  which  the 
Spirit  of  God  has  always  been  striving,  allying  himself  with 
that  which  is  best  in  man  and,  unless  all  the  instincts  and 
traditions  of  literature  are  illusions,  helping  man  in  literature 
as  nowhere  else  to  erect  himself  above  himself.  What  else  is 
the  meaning  of  the  preludial  invocation  for  aid  and  guidance 
to  a  higher  power  found  so  commonly  both  in  ancient  and 
modern  poetry?  Especially  do  we  see  this  essential  grandeur 
of  literature  in  its  most  ambitious,  I  may  say  its  most  auda- 
cious creation,  namely  tragedy.  For  what  is  tragedy?  What 
is  the  motive  of  tragic  invention?  Why  do  men  subject 
themselves  to  tragic  emotion?  Why  simulate  suffering,  and 
court  gratuitous  pain?  There  is  no  satisfactory  answer  to 
this  question  except  the  answer  made  by  man's  religious 
nature,  that  tragedy  evinces  man's  compulsory  interest  in  sin 
and  its  tragic  consequences.  Shakespeare  says:  " Conscience 
does  make  cowards  of  us  all;"  he  might  also  have  said: 
" Conscience  makes  tragedians  of  us  all."  Tragedy  is  one 
of  the  ways  in  which  the  human  soul  strives  to  work  out 
great  moral  problems.  It  is  contrary  to  the  deepest  in- 
stincts of  man  that  a  guilty  being  should  be  happy.  The 
human  race,  conscious  of  its  sinfulness,  and  in  sympathy  with 
the  principle  of  retribution,  makes  confession  in  tragedy;  it 
inflicts  punishment  on  itself;  it  strives  to  expiate  its  guilt 
by  self-inflicted  suffering.  When  a  whole  audience  weeps 
for  Lear  or  Desdemona,  and  feels  better  for  the  weeping  than 
if  it  had  laughed  with  Beatrice  or  Rosalind,  it  indulges  a 
feeling  of  vicarious  suffering  which  has  an  element  of  expiation 
in  it.  Among  ruder  peoples  this  spirit  manifests  itself  through 
the  coarser  tragic  emotions.  This  explains  the  interest  taken 
by  the  people  in  funerals,  murders,  executions;  the  tendency 
to  emphasize  and  prolong  all  emotions  connected  with  death. 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES          93 

What  Gray  calls  the  "  unlettered  muse/'  who  writes  the  rustic 
epitaphs,  makes  them  as  tragical  as  possible.  This  is  essen- 
tially true  of  the  profounder  peoples,  the  Scotch  and  the 
Puritans,  for  example,  whose  traditions,  folklore,  customs, 
even  pastimes,  are  deeply  tinged  with  somber  and  tragic 
shadows.  Rainbows  and  gardens,  cascades  and  mossy  val- 
leys, friendships,  love,  honored  old  age,  peaceful  deaths, 
all  this  will  do  for  a  gay  and  frolic  hour,  but  when  men  grow 
serious  they  want  mountains,  storms,  Niagaras,  thunders, 
earthquakes.  Arcadia  will  do  for  the  honeymoon;  after 
that  men  want  something  to  call  forth  the  stronger  emotions 
and  give  to  life  a  sense  of  reality  and  depth.  In  short  the 
human  soul  instinctively  feels  after,  and  harmonizes  with, 
the  Christian  solution  of  the  great  problem  of  life.  The 
central  fact  in  Christianity  is  a  tragedy,  the  one  tragedy 
which  includes  within  it  all  tragedy,  and  which  modifies  all 
other  tragedy.  The  universal  human  consciousness  of  guilt, 
the  soul's  dread  of  and  sympathy  with  retribution,  its  demand 
for  expiation,  was  met  and  satisfied  by  the  tragedy  on  Calvary. 
It  is  both  reverent  and  scriptural  to  say  that  the  death  of 
Christ  was  intended  to  awaken  tragic  emotion,  and  even 
in  Aristotle's  phrase  "  to  purify  human  passions. "  It  addresses 
itself  to  the  grand  passions,  terror,  grief,  indignation,  love 
in  its  highest  forms. 

And  it  follows  from  this  view  that  as  Christianity  more 
and  more  interpenetrates  human  consciousness,  tragedy  loses 
its  place,  and  gradually  falls  into  disuse.  The  world  has  seen 
its  greatest  tragedies.  The  great  problem  of  human  destiny 
has  been  solved.  Tragedy  is  essentially  a  Pagan  institution. 
Its  themes  were  the  unsolved  problems  of  the  moral  realm: 
it  has  been  superseded  and  can  never  be  revived. 

Yet  did  I  say  never?  There  is  one  supposable  contingency 
in  which  tragedy  would  have  a  melancholy  revival.  If 
certain  thinkers  and  teachers  should  have  their  way,  and 
should  succeed  in  destroying  man's  faith  in  a  personal  God 


94  THE  VERY  ELECT 

and  in  his  wise  and  loving  Providence,  and  in  substituting 
for  that  faith  a  conviction  that  the  universe  is  controlled  by 
irresponsible  forces  and  impersonal  law,  then  the  old,  hard, 
baffling  questions  would  return  upon  men  with  all  their  gloom 
and  terror.  Then  again  the  loftier  souls  would  struggle 
with  the  toils  which  a  relentless  destiny  had  thrown  around 
human  life;  then  again  the  sufferers  would  rave  in  impotent 
dithyrambics  against  the  powers  which  would  be  deaf  to 
their  cries;  and  again  the  chorus,  the  echo  of  the  best  human 
wisdom,  would  with  half-sincere  calmness  counsel  patience 
and  submission  to  that  awful  power  which  puny  man  can 
neither  understand  nor  evade. 

But  if  we  may  allow  ourselves  to  augur  well  from  this 
fundamental  conception  of  literature  as  being  the  treasure- 
house  of  the  best  that  humanity  has  achieved  or  imagined 
of  itself,  we  may  hope  for  still  more  when  we  reflect  that  the 
judge  who  pronounces  upon  what  claims  to  be  the  embodiment 
of  the  best,  is  mankind.  All  books  are  not  literature,  as  all 
Christians  are  not  found  in  the  calendar  of  Saints.  Literature 
is  the  canonized  thought  of  the  race.  But  who  elects  and 
consecrates  to  literary  sainthood?  No  conclave  of  critics, 
no  council  of  scholars,  but  the  great  multitude  who  think 
and  feel,  and  whose  voice  is  the  voice  of  mankind.  The 
total  literature  of  the  world  is  not  large  in  amount.  The 
Imperial  Library  of  Paris  with  its  two  million  volumes  con- 
tains no  more  literature  in  the  true  sense  than  might  be 
comfortably  ranged  on  the  modest  shelves  of  a  private  study. 
Apply  the  test  and  see  how  much  of  all  this  mass  of  printed 
matter  mankind  so  loves  and  prizes  that  it  would  not  willingly 
let  it  die.  Add  to  the  books  that  are  translated  into  all 
tongues  because  of  the  inalienable  value  of  the  thought, 
those  for  the  sake  of  whose  unmatchable  beauties  of  form 
men  will  be  at  the  pains  of  learning  a  foreign  tongue,  and 
how  many  works  will  you  count  up?  Will  there  be  thousands 
or  only  hundreds?  The  same  process  excludes  from  the  rank 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES          95 

of  literature  the  great  majority  of  the  works  in  all  languages 
which  a  capricious  and  shifting  popular  taste,  or  national 
vanity  may  have  canonized,  but  which  mankind  at  large  will 
not  admit  into  its  Pantheon.  It  is  quite  within  the  limits 
of  possibility  for  a  diligent  and  long-lived  student  to  make 
himself  familiar  with  the  total  literature  of  the  world.  So 
chary  is  mankind  of  this  highest  honor  within  its  gift,  so 
reluctant  to  admit  a  new  aspirant  to  the  rank  of  literary 
kingship!  How  long  the  probation  it  requires!  How  slowly 
its  judgment  is  matured!  How  intolerant  it  is  of  aught  but 
supreme  excellence!  Voltaire,  for  example,  has  now  been 
dead  a  hundred  years,  and  the  question  of  his  admission  to 
the  calendar  is  approaching  decision.  He  was  unquestionably 
the  greatest  genius  that  France  has  produced.  If  called  upon 
to  match  the  English  Shakespeare  and  the  German  Goethe, 
every  Frenchman  would  name  Voltaire.  His  contemporaries 
no  more  doubted  that  by  the  universal  judgment  of  mankind 
his  name  would  blaze  at  the  head  of  all  writers  of  every  age, 
than  they  doubted  his  superiority  to  the  insular  and  barbarian 
Shakespeare.  And  the  question  mankind  has  been  all  this 
time  settling  was  not  whether  the  genius  of  Voltaire  was  of 
the  first  order — for  that  has  never  been  disputed — but  whether 
for  the  sake  of  the  genius  it  could  overlook  that  spirit  of 
mockery,  that  almost  fiendish  malice,  which  tainted  everything 
that  came  from  his  pen.  It  seems  to  be  well-nigh  settled 
that  Voltaire  is  doomed  to  almost  the  same  degree  of  infamy 
in  literature  to  which  he  has  long  been  adjudged  in  religion. 
And  the  case  is  an  interesting  one  as  establishing  this  fact, — 
that  in  awarding  literary  approbation  and  honors,  mankind 
is  determined  to  take  good  care  that  morality  receives  no 
detriment.  Squeamish  it  does  not  pretend  to  be;  grossness, 
though  it  does  not  approve,  it  can  overlook ;  but  all  tampering 
with  moral  ideas,  all  open  irreverence,  or  covert  sneers  at 
virtue,  or  suspicion  of  impiety,  the  literary  judgment  of 
mankind  has  a  thousand  times  consigned  to  the  everlasting 
punishment  of  oblivion. 


96  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Proceeding  now  to  call  attention  to  some  of  the  character- 
istics of  literature,  which  evince  its  friendliness  to  religion, 
let  me  mention  first  what  I  do  not  hesitate  to  call  its  unworldly 
spirit.  The  sympathies  of  literature  do  not  go  out  toward 
power  and  grandeur  and  wealth,  but  toward  simplicity  and 
frugality,  toward  quiet  and  modest  worth.  Its  ideal  of  life 
is  unostentatious  and  unselfish.  That  which  Horace  says 
of  the  dramatic  chorus  is  true  of  all  literature.  '  "It  commends 
plain  living,  salutary  laws,  and  peace  with  her  open  gates: 
it  beseeches  the  gods  that  prosperity  may  return  to  the 
wretched  and  forsake  the  proud."1  Its  beatitudes,  like  those 
of  Scripture,  are  for  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  meek,  the  peace- 
makers, those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness. 
Its  sternest  invectives  it  bestows  upon  successful  tyrants, 
and  wealthy  oppressors  of  the  poor,  upon  pride  glittering  in 
splendor,  and  beauty  tossing  disdainful  looks  upon  the 
courtiers  who  obsequiously  bear  her  jewelled  train.  From 
Job  down  to  Walter  Scott  and  Tennyson,  literature  is  con- 
tinually reversing  contemporary  judgments  and  pleading 
the  cause  of  the  afflicted  and  the  unhappy.  When  it  vexes 
the  souls  of  the  righteous  to  see  that  the  ungodly  prosper 
in  the  world,  while  the  clean  in  heart  are  plagued  and  chas- 
tened every  morning,  and  the  thought  is  too  painful  for  them 
to  bear,  then  in  the  sanctuary  of  literature  as  in  the  sanctuary 
of  God  they  shall  hear  voices  reassuring  them  that  all  that 
is  really  to  be  desired  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is  theirs,  that 
God  is  guiding  them  here  by  his  counsel  and  shall  afterwards 
receive  them  into  glory.  Is  not  this,  when  translated  out 
of  the  forms  of  the  Hebrew  into  classical  speech,  the  lesson 
of  Greek  tragedy  and  Roman  philosophy?  Could  not  the 
Psalmist  be  voluminously  annotated  from  ^Eschylus  and 
Sophocles,  from  Cicero,  Horace  and  Seneca?  Need  I  remind 
you  how  all  the  old  myths  and  legends,  the  inexhaustible 
quarries  of  poetry,  imitate  the  divine  providence  in  that  they 

i  Ars  Poetica,  199. 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES  97 

put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seats  and  exalt  them  of  low 
degree?  Consider  with  what  religious  fidelity  to  the  claims 
of  an  unworldly  justice  the  great  poets  enlist  our  feelings 
on  the  side  of  virtue  though  unhappy  and  in  rags,  against 
prosperous  crime.  With  what  tenderness  they  depict  poverty, 
its  hardships,  its  sorrows,  its  glimpses  of  native  humanity! 
As  Jesus  himself  moved  about  among  the  homes  of  the  poor, 
pitying,  sympathizing,  cheering,  but  never  deriding  or  stirring 
up  discontent  or  resentment,  so  literature  seems  to  take 
peculiar  delight  in  covering  up  the  hard  features  of  poverty 
with  a  drapery  of  love,  in  training  vines  over  lowly  roofs, 
and  echoing  rebecks  and  madrigals,  psalms  and  prayers, 
from  the  smoky  rafters  of  huts  and  cabins.  With  what  a 
loving  hand  does  old  Chaucer  draw  the  protrait  of  the  poure 
persoun  of  a  toun,  and  how  paltry  and  contemptible  by 
the  side  of  him  seems  the  courtliest  ecclesiastic  of  his  time  or 
ours!  Whose  heart  does  not  warm  towards  the  tartan  of 
Jeanie  Deans,  poor  simple  soul  that  was  afraid  to  tell  a  lie, 
but  worthy  that  Queen  Caroline  should  have  been  at  her 
feet,  not  she  at  the  Queen's.  If  any  man  or  woman  can 
follow  the  fortunes  of  (Edipus  and  Antigone,  of  Lear  and 
Cordelia,  of  the  patient  Griselda  and  the  meek  Lady  Clare, 
and  not  feel  that  there  is  a  charm  and  loveliness  in  pure 
goodness  which  no  prosperity  can  outshine,  which  no  suffer- 
ing, nor  reverse  of  fortune,  nor  calamity,  nor  death,  can 
obscure,  I  hardly  know  what  there  is  in  religion  itself  that 
can  teach  the  lesson. 

I  notice  next  the  charity  of  literature.  The  Greek  drama- 
tist put  into  the  mouth  of  his  noblest  heroine  this  divine  sen- 
tence, worthy  to  have  been  uttered  by  the  inspired  lips  of 
the  Apostle  John — "My  nature  is  to  love  with  those  who 
love,  not  to  hate  with  those  who  hate."1  In  this  respect 
literature  resembles  Antigone.  Its  loves  are  spontaneous 
and  warm  and  universal;  its  hatreds  are  not  narrow  and 
7  i  Antigone,  523. 


98  THE  VERY  ELECT 

malicious;  they  are  but  the  protest  of  a  loving  nature  against 
evil.  One  of  the  functions  of  literature  is  so  to  portray  evil 
as  to  awaken  one's  antipathy  and  horror;  that  it  has  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  this  without  stirring  our  hatred  is  the  triumph 
of  charity.  Several  of  the  masters  in  literature  have  tried 
to  picture  the  Evil  One.  Milton  tried,  but  his  lofty  and 
generous  soul  misgave  him,  and  he  produced  a  magnificent 
archangel,  only  half  ruined.  Goethe  drew  his  Mephistopheles, 
and  succeeded  in  portraying  a  being  toward  whom  we  feel 
no  drawing  of  sympathy  only  by  making  him  passionless 
and  unhuman.  Poor  Burns  tried  to  say  some  hard  things 
to  the  Deil,  but  broke  down  and  ended  by  begging  him  to 
mend  his  ways.  Indeed  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  find  in 
all  literature  a  character  so  thoroughly  and  hopelessly  bad 
that  we  have  no  relentings  of  feeling  toward  him,  and  when 
the  rare  instance  is  found  it  is  revolting  and  painful.  Dickens 
has  sometimes  erred  in  this  way,  in  Fagin,  e.  g.,  and  reveals 
therein  his  lack  of  the  highest  literary  appreciation. 
»  And  then  again,  notice  the  humanity,  the  tenderness  with 
which  literature  addresses  itself  to  correct  the  mistakes, 
the  foibles  and  follies  of  mankind.  Like  a  parent  or  an 
elder  brother,  who  seeks  to  laugh  out  of  his  foolish  whims 
and  ways  one  whom  he  loves,  and  does  not  wish  to  offend, 
literature  assails  the  follies  of  mankind  by  humor,  which  is 
the  laugh  of  charity.  I  have  noticed  the  mockery  of  Voltaire. 
Out  of  the  vast  mass  of  his  writings,  the  charitable  spirit  of 
literature  will  suffer  but  some  small  fragments  to  live,  while 
every  line  of  Montaigne,  of  Cervantes  and  Goldsmith  will 
always  be  dear  to  the  heart  of  mankind.  It  is  strangely 
pleasant,  it  gives  one  confidence  in  the  virtuous  impulses  of 
mankind,  to  see  with  what  wise  charity  literature  defecates 
itself  of  the  malice  of  Swift,  the  spite  of  Pope,  the  fleering 
jest  of  Byron;  how  year  by  year  these  writers  occupy  a  less 
and  less  prominent  place  in  literature,  while  Chaucer,  and 
Shakespeare,  Burns  and  Cowper  and  Goldsmith,  men  whose 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  STUDIES          99 

nature  it  is  to  love  with  those  who  love,  and  not  to  hate  with 
those  who  hate,  are  multiplying  their  readers  and  admirers 
as  the  world  grows  older. 

What  literature  can  do  for  us  in  cultivating  our  finer  sensi- 
bilities, each  one's  experience,  however  limited,  will  enable 
him  to  some  extent  to  appreciate.  If  the  magazine  story 
thrown  off  by  some  slight  pen  has  yet  some  touches  of 
nature  in  it  which  find  or  make  some  soft  places  in  our  hearts, 
if  the  scrap  of  second-rate  poetry  in  the  corner  of  the  news- 
paper stir  an  emotion  within  us  which  vibrates  perhaps  through 
a  whole  day's  experiences,  what  might  we  expect  if  we  were  to 
subject  our  souls  to  the  influence  of  the  great  masters  of  Fiction 
and  Poetry,  skilled  in  all  the  pipes  and  stops  of  emotion,  and 
capable  of  hurrying  us  up  and  down  the  gamut  of  the  passions 
at  their  own  sovereign  pleasure?  Does  not  this  seem  the 
most  wonderful  of  all  the  wonderful  powers  that  God  has 
bestowed  upon  our  kind? — that  certain  men  should  have  the 
power  to  say,  "Thus  and  so  I  feel,  and  just  so  soon  as  I  can 
tell  the  world  how  I  feel,  it  shall  feel  exactly  as  I  do?  I  will 
paint  a  jolly,  greasy,  lecherous  monk  so  that  all  the  world 
shall  loathe  the  friars  as  I  do;  and  I  will  paint  a  parish  priest 
so  meek,  benign  and  Christlike  that  every  parish  in  Chris- 
tendom shall  make  him  their  ideal  of  a  parson.  I  have  in 
my  mind's  eye  a  woman  whom  my  own  heart  worships,  and 
I  will  make  all  the  world  bow  down  before  her.  I  will  force 
men  ages  hence  to  share  the  indignation  which  at  this  instant 
I  feel  against  ingratitude,  treachery,  falsehood."  Strange 
power!  There  is  no  tyranny  half  so  absolute  as  these  men 
wield.  No  man  can  say,  "I  will  read,  but  I  will  never  sur- 
render my  feelings  to  theirs."  You  can  stop  reading  some- 
times, but  if  you  trust  yourself  to  the  current  you  can  no  more 
stem  it  than  a  fly  in  a  torrent.  Why  has  God  delegated 
such  power  as  this  to  any  man?  Why  has  he  so  constituted 
us  that  the  exhibition  of  a  little  genuine  emotion  makes  us 
as  submissive  to  a  leader  as  a  flock  of  sheep?  Manifestly 


100  THE  VERY  ELECT 

for  this  beneficent  purpose,  that  those  who  feel  may  quicken 
those  who  do  not;  that  the  finer  natures,  that  kindle  quickly 
and  get  all  aglow  with  noble  and  generous  emotion,  may 
convey  the  sacred  fire  to  our  duller  and  colder  temperaments. 

Let  me  ask  any  of  you  who  may  have  found  yourselves 
under  such  a  spell  as  I  have  described,  What  was  it  that 
touched  you,  which  brightened  up  your  outlook  upon  life 
and  sent  you  with  a  new  hopefulness  to  your  work?  Quite 
as  likely  as  anything  it  was  some  one  of  those  simple  lyrics 
of  our  language,  which  go  so  gently  and  so  irresistibly  down 
through  the  crust  of  habit  and  the  stoicism  of  our  conventional 
life,  down  to  the  very  hiding-places  of  feeling,  where  grief 
and  joy,  mirth  and  tears,  mingle  close  together.  I  should 
say,  indeed,  not  to  go  outside  our  own  language,  that  we 
have  some,  nay,  many,  bits  of  literature,  which  are  such  true 
touchstones  of  genuine  feeling  that  one  who  could  read  them 
amid  favoring  influences  and  not  feel  himself  affected  by  them, 
roused  or  calmed,  melted  or  set  on  fire,  in  laughter  or  in  tears, 
would  have  good  reason  to  think  himself  far  gone  towards 
a  fatal  insensibility.  If  any  man  or  woman  can  without  emo- 
tion follow  the  fortunes  of  Lear  or  Cordelia,  or  the  Bride  of 
Lammermoor;  if  he  or  she  can  read  aloud  some  of  the  old 
English  ballads,  or  Cowper's  lines  on  his  Mother's  Picture, 
and  be  aware  of  no  lump  in  his  throat  and  no  mist  in  his 
eyes,  then  in  the  gentle  language  of  the  Greek  poet's  impre- 
cation, "Let  no  such  person  be  my  friend,  or  sit  at  my  hearth- 
stone." 

If  now  I  have  shown  that  literature  exalts  and  persuades 
to  that  which  is  best,  best  actual  and  conceivable;  that  its 
spirit  is  unworldly  and  its  tendency  spiritualizing;  and  that 
it  breathes  a  spirit  of  charity  through  all  its  works  and  into 
the  minds  of  its  votaries,  I  might  here  rest  the  case,  and  ask 
whether  or  not,  with  such  characteristics,  literature  is  favor- 
able to  religion.  I  might  ask  if  there  is  not  something  of  the 
wisdom  which  is  from  above  in  that  which  is  first  pure,  then 


INFLUENCE  OF  LITERARY  /STUDIES'' :  ; 

peaceable,  gentle,  and  easy  to  be  entreated,  full  of  good 
fruits,  without  partiality,  and  without  hypocrisy.  But  I 
add  to  this  evidence  of  a  religious  spirit  pervading  literature, 
its  incidental  and  yet  positive  recognition  and  enforcement 
of  religious  truth.  I  boldly  make  the  assertion  that  the  best 
literature  is  strongly  committed  to  objective  religion,  and 
modern  literature  to  the  Christian  religion.  Indeed,  I  might 
almost  say  without  qualification  that  all  the  best  literature, 
ancient  as  well  as  modern,  is  a  schoolmaster  bringing  men  to 
Christ.  Every  scholar  knows  that  ancient  classical  literature 
is  full  of  premonitions  of  Christianity.  Account  for  it  as  we 
may,  whether  by  stray  beams  of  the  Hebrew  revelation  rinding 
their  way  into  Egypt  and  Greece,  or  by  the  light  which 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world,  notions  of 
sacrifice,  of  the  incarnation,  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  other 
distinctively  spiritual  ideas,  run  through  and  give  almost 
a  Christian  flavor  to  parts  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  literatures. 
Modern  literature,  especially  English,  is  very  largely  Christian, 
not  merely  in  its  tone  and  drift,  but  in  the  doctrines  it  embodies 
and  the  life  it  commends.  It  is  no  new  thought,  but  one 
which  is  acknowledged  by  enemies  as  well  as  by  friends, 
that  English  literature  is  especially  theological.  Indeed, 
there  is  a  very  large  section  of  the  most  vigorous  and  most 
imaginative  literature  in  our  language  which,  if  we  were 
classifying,  we  should  hardly  know  whether  to  assign  to 
literature  or  to  theology.  I  mean  such  works  as  those  of 
Jeremy  Taylor,  Hooker,  South,  not  to  say  Spenser  and  Bun- 
yan.  And  this  gives  me  the  opportunity  to  offset  a  remark 
I  made  about  religious  reading,  by  saying  that  the  deficiency 
in  safe  and  wise  religious  books  is  largely  compensated  by 
the  overflow  of  religion  in  literary  works.  If  this  assertion 
of  religious  doctrine  and  this  pervasive  evangelical  spirit  is 
something  incidental,  of  which  both  writer  and  reader  may 
at  times  be  unconscious,  none  the  less  is  it  positive  and  salu- 
tary. Many  a  young  man  has  unintentionally  imbibed 


102  THE  VERY  ELECT 

truths  which  were  able  to  make  him  wise  unto  salvation, 
while  he  was  intent  only  on  human  thought  and  imaginings. 
So  thoroughly  Christianized  is  our  best  literature,  that  if 
by  some  great  calamity  the  Bible  were  swept  from  existence, 
and  every  religious  treatise  of  every  kind  were  burned  or  lost, 
all  the  great,  saving  truths  on  which  mankind  depend  for  life 
here  and  salvation  hereafter  would  be  saved  to  mankind  in 
the  shrines  which  literature  has  built  for  them. 


THE  SCHOOLMASTERS'   SELF-ESTIMATE 

AN  ADDRESS  TO  THE  VERMONT  SCHOOLMASTERS'  CLUB 

Men  of  the  Schoolmasters1  Club: 

I  congratulate  you  on  the  name  of  your  Club.  I  am  glad 
that  you  are  content — and  I  trust  proud — to  call  yourselves 
schoolmasters — that  you  have  had  the  courage  to  challenge 
respect  for  a  name  which  some  of  our  craft  would  discard  for 
a  more  pretentious  one.  We  teachers  in  all  grades  are,  or 
ought  to  be,  "  keeping  school."  When  we  feel  above  what 
that  means,  or  may  mean,  we  are  not  living  up  to  the  full 
reality  of  our  calling. 

But  having  said  this  much  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  indulge 
with  me  in  a  little,  and  not  so  very  little,  self-appreciation. 
It  will  not  hurt  us  and  it  may  do  other  people  good,  if,  for  the 
nonce,  we  yield  ourselves  to  a  frank  expression  of  what  we 
may  call  class-  consciousness.  It  has  been  regarded  as  a  brave 
and  wise  as  well  as  witty  thing  to  exclaim  with  Burns : 

"O  wad  some  Pow'r  the  giftie  gie  us 
To  see  oursels  as  others  see  us!" 

the  inference  being — if  you  will  follow  the  words  of  the  song 
a  little  further — that  we  are,  and  should  see  ourselves  to  be — 
blunderers,  and  fools,  and  hypocrites.  Now  however  liable 
others  may  be  to  have  these  humiliating  charges  brought 
home  to  them  by  self-knowledge,  we  schoolmasters  do  not 
own  to  the  impeachment.  Indeed  it  seems  to  us  that  Burns' 
sly  hit  at  people  in  general  should  be  turned  about  to  meet  our 
case,  and  that  it  is  a  thing  much  to  be  desired  that  some  Power 
would  give  to  other  people  the  gift  to  see  us  as  we  see  our- 
selves. It  would  surely  free  them  from  many  a  foolish  notion 

103 


104  THE  VERY  ELECT 

about  us.  For,  as  everybody  knows,  the  world  has  been  very 
much  to  blame  in  its  estimate  of  us  and  its  attitude  toward 
us.  It  has  injured  us  both  by  neglect  and  by  abuse.  The 
makers  of  history  and  literature  and  public  opinion  have  never 
given  to  teachers  a  prominent  place  in  the  world's  drama. 
The  tragedians  have  passed  us  by  entirely.  They  have  never 
dignified  us  by  representing  us  as  capable  of  a  great  crime. 
Shakespeare  in  all  his  multitudinous  range  of  tragic  characters 
has  no  place  for  a  schoolmaster.  The  only  instance  to  the 
contrary  which  I  recall  is  Eugene  Aram,  who  sometimes  comes 
upon  our  school  stage  between*  two  village  beadles  "with 
gyves  upon  his  wrist."  The  comedians  have  always  been  free 
to  use  us  as  good  material  for  humor,  but  have  almost  al- 
ways mixed  malice  with  their  humor,  as  though  they  had  some 
score  to  pay  off  against  old  smarts  and  indignities.  Aris- 
tophanes does  not  merely  laugn  at  Socrates,  he  belabors 
him,  and  fairly  draws  welts  upon  his  back.  Would  that 
Chaucer  had  portrayed  our  prototype  of  his  time!  Why 
should  he  not  have  been  admitted  to  that  jolly  company  along 
with  the  "  Clerk  of  Oxenford," — or  was  there  no  such  person 
at  that  time?  If  Dan  Chaucer  had  "done  for  us,"  or  Charles 
Lamb,  or  Tom  Hood,  we  should  have  been  in  the  classical 
roll  and  could  have  laughed  at  ourselves  in  good  temper.  It 
has  not  tended  to  reconcile  us  to  our  assigned  rank  in  the 
world's  judgment  to  have  Milton  counted  among  us  and  to 
read  his  exculpation  therefor  in  his  serving  without  compensa- 
tion! But  Goldsmith  did  depict  the  village  schoolmaster, 
and  Shenstone  the  schoolmistress;  both  with  kindly  touches; 
both  with  a  grotesqueness  which  we  pardon,  and  with  a  con- 
descension which  we  resent.  The  most  genial  and  apprecia- 
tive portraiture  of  the  schoolmaster  which  our  literature 
presents  is  Ian  McLaren's  Dominie  (long  o,  if  you  please) 
especially  in  his  relation  to  the  "lad  o'  pairts."  But  charm- 
ing, touching,  reassuring  as  this  portrayal  is,  it  is  not  cypical, 
it  is  local,  because  no  other  country  in  the  world  could  have 


THE  SCHOOLMASTERS'   SELF-ESTIMATE    105 

furnished  the  environment  which  made  it  possible  and  real. 
You  would  have  to  get  centuries  of  Scotch  hard-he adedn ess 
and  tender-heartedness,  of  Scotch  metaphysics  and  theology 
and  piety,  before  you  could  reproduce  either  Dr.  McClure  or 
the  Domsie. 

What  the  world  in  all  its  characterizations  of  the  school- 
master seems  to  deny  us  is  the  full,  round,  human  life.  They 
always  represent  us  as  solitaries,  as  living  in  and  for  our 
schoolroom,  homeless  elsewhere,  getting  all  the  satisfaction 
life  affords  us  out  of  the  scenes  and  implements  and  small 
bigotries  of  a  spot  unloved  of  memory  by  those  who  have 
passed  through  it. 

Are  we  really  so  unlovable,  so  un human?  What  are 
the  faults  with  which  we  are  charged?  Let  us  either  deny 
them,  or  correct  them. 

They  say  we  are  opinionated.  Well,  we  are.  We  spend  most 
of  our  time  in  a  company  in  which  we  are  official  umpires — 
in  which  we  have  our  own  say,  and  our  own  way,  without 
contradiction.  Unless  we  have  homes  in  which  our  dicta 
and  our  autocracy  are  effectively  disputed,  we  have  no  fair 
chance  to  get  the  snubbing  which  every  man  needs  in  order 
to  have  the  natural  masculine  arrogance  taken  out  of  him. 
But  if  peradventure  we  have  that  one  chance,  and  suffer 
some  lese-majeste  thereby,  or  by  any  other  ruffling  of  our 
plumes  in  a  rude  world  outside  of  our  schoolroom,  let  it 
not  be  said  of  us  that  we  take  our  vengeance  on  the  urchins 
who  have  no  power  to  talk  back  to  us  till  they  get  out  into 
the  world  and  join  those  who  taunt  us  with  being  opinionated. 

They  say  we  are  censorious,  that  our  view  of  life  and  of 
men  is  hard,  inclined  to  be  morose.  They  compare  us  to  the 
elaer  brother  of  the  prodigal  in  the  parable.  They  say,  be- 
cause we  do  not  approve  cakes  and  ale  we  forbid  other  people 
having  them.  Perhaps  there  is  some  truth  in  this.  It  is  one 
part  of  our  business  to  see  that  no  guilty  grammar  escapes — 
no  split  infinitive  or  mixed  metaphor.  We  believe  with  the 


106  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Edinburgh  Review,  that,  Judex  damnatur  cum  nocens  absolvi- 
tur.  It  is  one  of  our  virtues  to  be  critical;  otherwise  the 
rising,  and  the  risen,  generation  would  get  into  slovenly  and 
slipshod  habits.  It  is  possible  we  overdo  this  virtue.  We 
will  think  of  it.  Le  roi  s'avisera. 

They  say  we  are  pedantic — that  is,  that  we  judge  outside 
matters  by  the  standards  of  the  schoolroom — perhaps  we  are 
inclined  that  way.  To  Browning's  Grammarian  life  meant 
only  the  opportunity  to  do  justice  to  subjunctives,  particles 
and  enclitics.  Too  many  hours  spent  on  the  second  aorist 
and  the  binomial  theorem,  and  too  few  on  the  practical  prob- 
lems of  good  living,  may  distort  our  estimates  of  relative 
values.  We  may  be  in  danger  of  becoming  pedantic — almost 
as  pedantic  as  the  lawyer  who  maintained  that  the  question  of 
the  freedom  of  the  will  can  never  be  settled  until  it  is  argued 
before  and  decided  by  a  full  bench  of  judges;  almost  as  pedan- 
tic as  the  cleric  who  would  settle  modern  social  questions 
by  the  book  of  Leviticus.  I  hope  other  schoolmasters  are  not 
so  far  gone  as  that  Boston  master  who  after  hearing  one  of 
Phillips  Brooks'  great  sermons  could  be  got  to  give  no  other 
judgment  upon  it  than  that  the  preacher  had  committed  a 
grammatical  blunder  in  one  of  his  sentences.  To  be  pedantic 
is — let  us  confess  it — one  of  the  defects  of  our  qualities,  to 
be  guarded  against,  to  be  minimized,  not  to  be  defended  or 
excused. 

But  now  suppose  we  are,  to  a  certain  degree,  less  or  more, 
pedantic,  and  censorious,  and  opinionated,  different  forms  of 
only  one  fault  you  will  perceive,  if  any  one  should  on  the 
basis  of  this  one  fault,  go  on  to  put  us  in  the  rightly  con- 
demned and  abhorred  class  of  cynics,  he  would  be  greatly 
mistaken,  and  would  do  us  a  great  wrong.  Cynics  school- 
masters are  not.  A  cynic  is  one  who  takes  pleasure  in  the 
infirmities  of  his  fellow-men — who  gloats  over  their  mistakes 
and  magnifies  them — who  seeks  them  out  not  to  correct  them 
but  to  get  scorn  of  them.  It  is  impossible  that  the  school- 


THE  SCHOOLMASTERS'   SELF-ESTIMATE     107 

master  should  be  a  cynic,  because  he  sees  human  nature  where 
it  is  at  its  best — in  children  and  youth,  and  if  he  is  in  any 
degree  an  expert  in  his  business,  he  sees  how  this  nature  re- 
sponds to  good  influences,  and  how  great  is  his  opportunity  if 
he  is  equal  to  it.  I  wish  I  could  say  of  the  schoolmaster  that 
he  is  constitutionally  a  humorist,  for  a  fuller  and  more  com- 
prehensive humor  would  correct  most  of  his  mistakes.  But  he 
comes  much  nearer  to  being  a  humorist  than  a  cynic.  A 
humorist  is  one  who  sees  the  faults  of  men  as  only  foibles  and 
would  correct  them  by  a  laugh.  The  schoolmaster  is  so  far  a 
humorist  that  he  wants  to  see  the  follies  of  mankind  cor- 
rected, not  kept  on  show  for  his  delectation.  We  shall  come 
nearer  the  right  designation  of  him  if  we  style  him  a  "  human- 
ist," one  who  has  faith  in  human  nature,  in  its  actual  worth 
and  its  capacity  of  indefinite  improvement.  The  first  men 
to  bear  this  honorable  historic  name,  the  "humanists"  of  the 
Renaissance,  were  schoolmasters,  virtually  such.  The  es- 
sence of  the  humanistic  spirit  was  faith  in  good  learning, 
in  literature,  and  philosophy,  and  art,  as  uplifting  and  vital- 
izing forces  in  human  character  and  development.  And 
what  but  this,  in  however  humble  guise,  is  the  genius  of  the 
schoolmaster  spirit  in  all  climes  and  ages. 

What  men  caricature  when  they  represent  the  schoolmaster 
as  thinking  to  improve  mankind  by  the  rod,  by  horn-book 
and  slate  and  grammar,  by  droning  over  dull  lessons  in  drowsy 
afternoons,  becomes  a  different  thing  when  we  think  of  the 
humanist  teaching  Greek  to  King  Edward  and  Lady  Jane 
Grey,  of  wandering  scholars  unlocking  Greek  manuscripts 
in  monasteries  and  flooding  the  world  with  the  light  which 
made  men  eager  to  explore  and  discover  and  invent  and  make 
all  life  larger  and  more  vital.  What  was  all  this  but  the 
same  spirit  which  now  amid  the  numbness  of  cold  winter 
mornings  and  the  dronings  of  drowsy  summer  afternoons,  seeks 
to  instill  into  the  child's  mind  the  humanity  which  now  as 
then  and  ever  is  latent  in  horn-book  and  in  illuminated  man- 


108  THE  VERY  ELECT 

uscript,  in  the  words  written  or  printed,  conned  in  the  school- 
room to  be  afterward  wielded  as  the  instruments  of  the 
thought,  noble  or  subtle,  which  leads  the  world  onward  to 
its  achievements.  Great  was  the  power  of  the  horn-book 
when  little  Hans  in  Germany,  Peterkin  in  England,  and  wee 
Rab  in  Scotland,  began  to  master  it.  Great  always  and 
everywhere  is  rudimentary  knowledge,  the  stock  in  trade 
of  the  schoolmaster,  because  out  of  it  come  all  the  dynamics 
of  civilization  and  progress  and  humanity  at  its  highest  and 
best. 

The  world  owes  the  highest  respect  to  schoolmasters  be- 
cause they,  together  with  the  schoolmistresses,  constitute  a  sort 
of  intellectual  caste  in  a  community,  which  tones  up  the  think- 
ing and  conduct  of  the  rest.  They  do  for  a  community  the 
service  which  Harry  Brougham  had  in  mind  when  he  said 
that  "the  schoolmaster  is  abroad."  They  stand  for  intelli- 
gence and  good  taste  and  good  manners  in  a  community,  for 
correct  speech  and  good  spelling  and  writing.  If  the  reform- 
ers of  spelling  could  enlist  all  the  schoolmasters  on  their  side 
the ^est  of  their  work  would  be  easy.  Associated  tacitly  or 
openly  with  the  minister,  the  doctor  and  the  squire,  they  help 
to  form  in  a  New  England  town  a  quadrilateral  of  intelligence 
against  ignorance  and  vulgarity  and  animalism.  They  work 
favorably  upon  the  other  members  of  che  group,  keeping  the 
minister  up  to  standard  in  his  preaching,  the  doctor  and  the 
lawyer  up  to  the  requirements  of  a  liberal  calling. 

We  may  go  a  step  farther  and  say  that  schoolmasters  as  a 
class  can  be  depended  upon — and  are  actually  relied  upon — to 
be  on  the  right  side  of  all  social  and  moral  questions  which 
arise  in  a  community,  and  to  be  among  the  leaders  of  that 
side.  I  mean  to  say  that  there  is  in  every  community  so 
strong  a  presumption  that  teachers  will  give  their  influence  in 
favor  of  law  and  order,  of  sobriety  and  decency  and  public 
virtue  of  all  kinds,  that  an  instance  to  the  contrary  would  sur- 
prise and  shock  the  general  mind  more  than  would  such  a  lapse 


THE  SCHOOLMASTERS'   SELF-ESTIMATE     109 

in  a  member  of  any  other  calling  in  the  community.  If  any 
class  is  entitled  to  be  considered  censors  of  public  morals  and 
manners  it  is  the  schoolmasters.  If  in  any  community  there 
arises  a  question  of  temperance  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 
of  decency  in  public  exhibitions,  of  a  quiet  observance  of  the 
day  of  rest,  of  the  humane  treatment  of  animals,  of  quiet 
streets  at  night,  of  providing  wholesome  and  excluding  harm- 
ful literature  for  the  young,  and  any  of  the  hundred  great  and 
little  things  on  which  the  comfort  and  well-being  of  citizens 
depend,  you  always  know  on  which  side  of  such  questions  the 
schoolmasters  will  be :  and  could  there  be  any  greater  tribute  to 
their  value  as  members  of  the  community?  And  they  are  not 
mere  passive  approvers  of  what  other  men  do.  What  most 
communities  need  is  men  of  initiative,  of  readiness  to  move  off 
on  new  lines  of  effort  called  for  by  the  times.  And  they  have 
what  is  equally  needed — good  judgment,  discretion,  wise  mod- 
eration in  reform  movements.  If  some  impatient  agitator, 
man  or  woman,  wants  to  stir  up  a  community  over  some 
chimerical  scheme  for  bringing  in  the  millennium  the  day  after 
tomorrow,  he  may  find  his  victim  and  his  dupe,  possibly,  in  an 
editor,  or  a  writer  of  drama  or  fiction,  or  a  clergyman,  never 
in  a  schoolmaster.  But  if  you  want  to  interest  some  one  in  a 
sober,  sane  movement  for  the  betterment  of  village,  or  church, 
or  politics,  for  better  sanitation,  or  beautifying  of  yards 
and  streets  and  cemeteries,  go  to  the  schoolmaster  and  you 
will  get,  first,  a  thorough,  dispassionate  investigation  of  the 
scheme  proposed,  and  if  approved,  a  countenance  and  support 
which  will  help  to  carry  conviction  to  the  minds  of  all  the  rest 
of  the  community.  If  these  matters  in  which  the  school- 
master's influence  is  so  potent  seem  to  be  minor  matters  as 
compared  with  the  large  politics  and  high  finance  which  make 
talk  in  the  newspapers,  they  are  after  all  the  things  which 
make  almost  all  the  difference  between  a  community  fit  to  live 
in,  and  bring  up  children  in,  and  come  back  to  in  old  age,  and 
one  which  all  reputable  people  would  forsake  if  they  were 
in  it,  or  avoid  if  they  were  outside. 


110  THE  VERY  ELECT 

But  the  main  reason  why  the  schoolmaster  is  entitled  to 
the  respect  of  the  world  is  because  of  the  immense  power  which 
he  holds  in  his  hands  and  for  the  exercise  of  which  he  is  held 
responsible.  Measure  it  on  one  side  by  the  evil  he  might  do 
if  he  had  the  wicked  will  to  do  it.  What  conspiracy  of  evil 
outside  of  the  infernal  regions  is  comparable  to  what  a  com- 
pany of  evil-minded  teachers  could  effect,  what  wrong  ideas 
they  might  instill,  what  vicious  principles  they  might  in- 
culcate; and  how  quietly  and  insidiously,  and  for  a  time 
unnoticeably,  they  could  do  their  work  of  mischief.  We  put 
under  heavy  bonds,  legal  and  moral,  the  men  who  are  en- 
trusted with  the  funds  of  the  community,  we  reward  them  for 
fidelity  by  honors  and  emoluments,  we  punish  them  severely  for 
unfaithfulness,  but  what  power  of  evil  have  they  which  could 
for  a  moment  be  compared  with  that  in  the  hands  of  teachers, 
the  power  to  teach  untruthfulness,  disobedience  to  parents, 
love  of  mischief,  disregard  of  the  rights  of  property,  of  order, 
of  peace,  in  a  community?  What  if  we  should  find  that  in 
some  of  our  public  schools,  the  extreme  doctrines  of  socialism, 
or  of  anarchism — the  right  and  duty  of  assassination,  of  pri- 
vate revenge,  and  of  free  love — were  openly  or  secretly  incul- 
cated? Or  if  we  may  not  imagine  a  bad  teacher,  directly 
imparting  vicious  principles,  are  we  safe  against  a  weak  teacher, 
who  does  not  discover  and  repress  the  evil  which  is  ever  latent 
in  the  few  pupils  of  evil  mind,  and  ready  to  spring  up  and 
work  mischief  if  not  kept  under  by  the  strong  hand?  But 
let  us  rather  measure  the  teachers'  value  by  the  good  which 
they  do,  and  which  we  credit  them  with  doing.  What  are  the 
agencies  which  more  than  others  determine  what  human  society 
will  be  in  the  next  generation?  Are  they  the  homes?  Yes, 
first  of  all.  The  churches?  Yes,  next,  in  spite  of  all  which  is 
grievingly,  or  boastfully,  said  of  their  waning  influence.  But 
third  in  power  and  responsibility  come  the  schools — power,  in 
many  cases  even  if  not  rightly  so,  actually  greater  than  that  of 
the  other  two  combined,  because  more  systematic  and  vigi- 


THE   SCHOOLMASTERS'  SELF-ESTIMATE     111 

lant.  Is  it  cause  or  consequence,  or  both,  of  the  phenomenal 
prosperity  of  the  new  Western  states,  that  they  have  provided 
for  themselves  the  most  comprehensive  and  the  most  liberally 
endowed  school  system  in  the  world — splendid  tribute  paid 
by  the  foremost  material  civilization  to  the  pre-eminence  of  the 
things  of  the  spirit !  All  over  the  United  States,  and  among  all 
enlightened  and  progressive  peoples,  the  schools  are  among  the 
foremost  objects  of  public  interest,  regard  and  pride.  In  all 
public  festivities  and  displays  the  children  of  the  schools  take 
conspicuous  part.  The  school  bill  is  among  the  largest  in 
any  civic  budget:  school  architecture  arrests  the  eye  in  city 
and  country  in  almost  equal  rivalry  with  churches  and  courts 
of  justice.  The  school  " proposition,"  to  use  a  Western  term, 
looms  up  everywhere  as  one  of  the  "burning  questions"  which 
excite  and  agitate  parties  and  factions.  It  is  the  most  promi- 
nent question  in  English  politics;  it  is  one  of  the  great  divisive 
factors  in  the  social  life  of  France;  it  is  recognized  as  the 
leading  element  of  prosperity  in  Germany.  But  the  real 
agents  in  all  this  social  and  national  well-being,  the  priests  of 
this  world-wide  cult,  the  schoolmasters,  what  of  them?  They 
are  the  least  conspicuous  of  all  the  personages  in  the  scene. 
They  live  in  modest  houses  in  the  back  streets.  They  go  on 
foot,  not  driven  in  sumptuous  carriages  nor  wheeled  in  motor 
cars.  On  great  public  occasions  they  are  not  honored  with 
seats  on  the  platform.  They  are  Mordecais  sitting  outside 
the  palace  gate  while  the  Hamans  of  war  and  finance  and  com- 
merce pass  in  and  out  before  the  royal  presence.  But  the 
day  is  coming,  and  is  not  far  off,  when  the  great  royal,  the 
great  imperial,  public  will  have  its  eyes  opened  to  see  who  are 
its  true  servants  and  its  real  benefactors,  and  they  will  raise 
the  cry,  "What  shall  be  done  to  the  men  whom  the  people  de- 
light to  honor?"  and  then  the  schoolmaster — and  by  his 
side  the  schoolmistress — will  get  their  long  overdue  applause 
and  honor  and  reward. 


THE  DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION 
READ  BEFORE  THE  FACULTY  CLUB,  1910 

THE  question  may  be  taken  either  as  defending  under  a 
specious  term  our  old  friend  the  recitation,  or  as  proposing 
something  to  take  the  place  of  it.  In  either  case  it  is  the  oral 
lesson  in  comparison  with  the  lecture  method  of  instruction. 
It  is  not  necessarily  the  one  versus  the  other,  for  no  one  doubts 
that  each  has  its  place  and  value  in  a  course  of  instruction. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  put  the  so-called  recitation  method  in  the 
way  of  showing  its  best  capabilities. 

It  is  never  the  part  of  wisdom  to  estimate  the  merits  of  any- 
thing by  its  capacity  of  abuse.  The  fact  of  very  gross  abuse 
may  be  an  indication  of  great  possibilities  of  good  as  well  as 
of  evil.  The  catechetic  or  recitation  method  of  instruction  has 
shown  itself  possessed  of  resources  of  both  kinds.  It  is  the 
oldest,  simplest,  most  natural,  most  generally  practised  form 
of  instruction.  It  has  had  in  the  various  hands  that  have  used 
it,  the  best  results  and  the  worst.  The  greatest  teachers  the 
world  has  produced  have  used  it  and  have  demonstrated  its 
efficiency  to  such  a  degree  as  to  leave  no  question  as  to  its 
permanent  place  in  the  armory  of  educational  instruments. 
On  the  other  hand  the  poorest  teachers  have  found  in  it  a 
refuge  for  incompetency  and  a  disguise  both  to  others  and 
to  themselves  of  their  inefficiency.  But  in  spite  of  perversion 
and  abuse  it  has  not  become  an  outlived  and  obsolete  method 
of  instruction.  It  will  not  become  obsolete,  because  it  has 
in  it  possibilities  of  good  which  scholastic  philosophy  will 
better  and  better  discern,  and  which  the  scholastic  art  cannot 
afford  to  dispense  with.  Our  object  is  to  find  the  capabilities 
of  the  method  when  at  its  best.  An  easy,  off-hand  answer  to 

112 


DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION  113 

our  question  would  be:  "If  you  want  to  learn  the  capabilities 
of  the  method,  read  Xenophon  and  Plato."  But  while  we 
recognize  Socrates  as  the  greatest  exemplar  of  the  power  of  the 
catechetic  method,  yet  his  method  is  not  in  all  respects  the 
ideal  and  the  model  for  us.  Socrates  put  to  his  interlocutor 
leading  questions  in  which  the  right  conclusion  was  implicit. 
The  party  of  the  second  part  was  an  accomplice  in  the  process 
but  not  a  principal.  He  was  by  his  compulsory  assent  to  one 
proposition  compelled  to  assent  to  the  next,  and  the  next, 
until  he  was  landed  in  a  position  which  surprised  him.  The 
transaction  was  really  monologue  in  the  form  of  question  and 
assent.  The  teacher  really  did  all  the  reasoning  to  which 
the  pupil  gave  his  nod  of  approval.  The  art  of  it  was  that  of 
the  mechanical  device  known  as  the  inclined  plane;  the  ascent 
from  premise  to  conclusion  was  so  gradual  and  easy  that  the 
victim,  if  I  may  so  call  him, — that  is  what  one  of  the  audience 
called  himself — the  unconscious  reasoner  was  hardly  aware  of 
his  progress  till  he  found  himself  on  some  pinnacle  of  philo- 
sophic speculation  which  it  made  him  dizzy  to  contemplate. 
The  modern  teacher  cannot  do  better  than  to  study  the  didac- 
tic art  of  Socrates.  From  it  he  will  learn  much:  the  potency 
of  the  question  as  a  factor  in  reasoning;  the  virtue  of  going 
slow  in  the  process  of  convincing;  the  value  of  the  side-light 
in  the  elucidation  of  an  idea;  the  illusiveness  and  danger  of 
imagery,  especially  when,  as  is  the  case  of  most  imagery,  a 
sensuous  image  is  used  to  illustrate  a  spiritual  conception; 
with  many  other  helps  of  the  greatest  value  to  him  as  a  student 
of  didactic  art;  but  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  for  him  to  try 
to  reproduce  the  Socratic  method. 

What  is  the  catechetical  or  recitation  method  at  its  best? 
First,  where  is  it  most  available?  I  should  answer,  with 
younger  students— say,  almost  exclusively,  up  to  the  end  of  the 
Sophomore  year, — and  in  the  elementary  stages  of  all  mathe- 
matical, linguistic,  literary,  historic,  socialistic,  political  and 
philosophical  subjects,  and  in  connection  with  laboratory 


114  THE  VERY  ELECT 

work  in  scientific  and  technical  branches.  This  statement 
is  meant  to  be  in  part  a  protest  against  the  lecture  method  im- 
ported into  our  elementary  teaching  from  Germany,  without 
other  German  counteracting  and  sustaining  agencies.  The 
abuse  of  this  method,  the  introduction  of  it  at  unfit  periods, 
and  the  displacement  by  it  of  work  on  the  part  of  the  pupil 
and  of  individual  drill  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  has  in  my 
judgment  weakened  the  effectiveness  of  our  elementary 
teaching  to  a  deplorable  extent  during  the  last  generation. 
The  pupil,  instead  of  being  required  and  helped  to  master  the 
elements  and  fundamentals  of  a  subject,  has  in  many  cases 
been  given  courses  on  haphazard  topics  within  the  general 
subject,  the  preparation  and  delivery  of  which  have  been 
matters  of  interest  and  of  ambition  to  the  young  instructor, 
but  of  questionable  value  to  the  pupil.  The  teachers  of  law 
and  of  medicine  have  found  out  earlier  than  other  teachers  the 
mistake  of  depending  mainly  on  lectures,  and  now  almost  all 
high-grade  schools  of  law  and  medicine  insist  on  a  large  amount 
of  text-book  and  catechetical  instruction.  When  we  have 
secured  a  basis  of  confirmed  habits  of  study,  and  a  knowledge 
of  the  fundamental  elements  and  principles  of  the  subject  to 
be  mastered,  then  and  not  before,  we  seek  for  the  enlargement, 
the  spirit  of  research,  the  inspiration,  which  may  come  from 
the  lecturer  and  the  investigator. 

So  much  for  the  when  and  where  of  catechetical  teaching. 
As  to  the  substance  of  it,  let  us  first  require  a  good  text-book 
for  a  start.  A  good  text-book  is  one  which  puts  before  the 
pupil  the  essentials  of  the  subject  in  hand  with  clearness,  with 
well-graded  advance,  with  completeness  so  far  as  it  goes.  Such 
a  book  cannot  be  made  by  a  novice.  No  one  can  so  well  set 
forth  the  elements  of  a  subject  as  one  who  has  made  great 
advance  in  it.  We  of  this  day  are  suffering  from  a  trade  com- 
petition in  the  making  and  vending  of  text-books.  Many  of 
our  books  are  made  by  young  instructors  who  are  hired  by 
rival  publishers  to  prepare  them  for  "covers  and  a  market." 


DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION  115 

What  writers  of  text-books  in  mathematics,  for  instance,  are 
taking  the  places  of  the  Legendres  and  Bourdons  and  the 
authors  of  the  Cambridge  series?  What  writers  in  philosophy, 
the  place  of  Locke  and  Butler;  in  political  economy,  of  Adam 
Smith  and  Say?  It  is  a  great  advantage  to  be  under  the  in- 
fluence of  a  great  original  and  powerful  mind,  as  we  are  when 
we  study  such  works,  rather  than  the  texts  struck  off  to  order 
for  profitable  trade.  Nevertheless,  if  the  ordinary  teacher 
will  use  the  best  available  text-book,  he  will  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred  do  better  than  to  extemporize  a  produc- 
tion in  the  form  of  a  lecture  of  his  own.  The  reason  for  using 
a  text-book  is  in  order  to  put  before  the  pupil  something  to  be 
mastered  by  his  own  resources,  some  definite  task  to  be  ac- 
complished. To  be  obliged  to  "get  one's  lesson,"  sounds  very 
school-boyish,  but  more  intellectual  fibre  is  created  and 
nourished  by  the  process  than  by  the  attempt  to  absorb 
knowledge  through  a  lecture.  A  certain  moral  discipline  blends 
with  the  intellectual  in  this  work  of  preparation  for  the  class. 
It  makes  an  appeal  to  will-power,  to  fidelity,  to  the  sense  of 
gratification  in  having  done  one's  part  well.  The  demoral- 
izing influence  of  a  condition  in  which  one  feels  that  he  can 
do  as  he  likes,  as  regards  preparation,  the  indulgences  and 
vagaries  and  dolce-far-nientes  into  which  the  lecture  system 
tempts  an  immature  student, — all  this  is  most  effectually 
counteracted  by  the  stern  obligation  to  master  a  certain  defi- 
nite portion  of  a  text-book  every  day  under  threat  of  mental 
if  not  physical  vapulation  if  one  fails. 

But  preparation  for  the  catechetical  lesson  is,  or  should  be, 
more  than  a  preparation  in  the  subject — in  a  certain  definite 
assigned  subject.  This  of  course  applies  to  pupils  of  somewhat 
mature  age.  Here  is  room  and  call  for  the  initiative  of  the 
teacher  and  the  enterprise  of  the  pupil.  Preparation  should 
not  with  such  pupils  be  a  mere  conning  of  formulated  knowl- 
edge, but  an  effort  to  appropriate  all  available  knowledge  on 
the  subject  which  time  and  means  permit.  Here  is  the  place 


116  THE  VERY  ELECT 

for  the  differentiation  of  pupils.  There  should  be  a  somewhat 
definite  minimum  of  expectation  as  regards  the  ordinary  or 
average  pupil,  with  which  the  better  minds  should  not  be 
suffered — or  suffer  themselves — to  be  content.  The  abler 
pupils  should  be  called  on  to  take  part  in  the  instruction  of 
the  class.  The  reason  why  it  is  so  great  an  advantage  to  be 
a  member  of  a  certain  class  in  college  is  that  in  such  class  a 
certain  number  of  superior  minds  contribute  an  important 
element  to  the  instruction  of  the  class.  The  competent  teacher 
requires  of  them  this  surplusage  of  preparation  and  co-opera- 
tion with  himself  in  the  amount  and  value  of  the  matter 
brought  out  in  the  class-room. 

But  preparation  for  this  class-room  involves  more  than 
preparation  in  the  text-book  and  in  the  topic  assigned;  it  is 
a  preparation  to  meet  the  teacher;  to  meet  him,  to  encounter 
him,  to  satisfy  him.  That  is  a  pertinent  phrase  they  have  at 
Oxford:  so-and-so  has  " satisfied  the  examiners."  To  satisfy 
the  teacher  in  a  personal  encounter; — not  by  pen  or  pencil 
work,  which  in  some  subjects  operates  as  a  disguise  of  ignorance 
in  the  same  way  as  written  work,  lecturing,  disguises  the  igno- 
rance of  the  teacher.  To  be  able  to  write  on  and  on  about  a 
subject — "to  talk  about  it,  goddess,  and  about  it" — often 
conceals  ignorance — certainly  requires  far  less  knowledge  than 
does  an  ability  to  handle  a  subject  catechetically.  In  order 
to  meet  a  class  in  a  catechetical  exercise  a  teacher  needs  to 
prepare  himself  thoroughly,  to  mark,  learn  and  inwardly  digest 
his  subject,  so  that  he  can  deal  with  it  lucidly,  comprehensively, 
accurately  in  an  encounter  with  the  dullness,  the  mistakes,  the 
eager  inquisitiveness,  the  latent  or  active  power  of  appreciation 
in  the  pupils.  And  they,  on  their  part,  should  be  taught 
and  accustomed  to  foresee  and  expect,  and  to  have  a  certain 
wholesome  fear  of  this  encounter  with  the  teacher;  to  fear  it 
in  such  a  way  that  to  earn  through  it  his  respect  and  approba- 
tion brings  an  intellectual  gratification  and  reward. 

But  now  with  the  appearance  of  the  pupil  in  the  class-room 


DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION  117 

with  his  prepared  lesson,  comes  the  real  distinction  between 
the  good  and  the  bad  use  of  the  recitation  method.  The  bad 
method  has  been  gruesomely  described  as  first  swallowing 
something,  and  then  regurgitating  it.  In  so  far  as  this  is  a 
taunt  brought  by  the  lecturists,  a  fair  reply  would  be,  that 
even  this  is  better  than  carrying  a  predigested  mass  in  an  inert 
stomach.  It  is  a  fundamental  mistake  to  make  of  the  exercise 
a  mere  examination,  an  inquisition  to  find  out  whether  the 
pupil  has  learned  his  lesson.  This  is  only  an  incident,  and  a 
minor  incident,  in  the  proceeding.  The  main  thing  is  to  help 
the  pupil  to  master,  to  appropriate,  to  assimilate  this  bit  of 
knowledge.  He  has  done  what  he  could  with  a  certain  intel- 
lectual problem;  he  has  attacked  a  difficulty,  and  in  the  doing 
of  it  he  has  got  some  knowledge  and  some  discipline.  But 
both  his  knowledge  and  his  discipline  can  be  added  to.  He  has 
solved  his  problem  but  perhaps  not  in  the  best  way;  you  are 
to  show  him  the  better  way.  He  has  worked  out  a  translation 
of  a  difficult  passage  in  Thucydides  or  Dante:  you  show  him 
its  deficiencies,  and  give  him  a  more  accurate  or  more  elegant 
one.  He  has  some  glimpse  of  the  right  relations  of  value  and 
price,  and  you  help  him  to  a  clearer  view  of  the  whole  matter. 
You  do  this  in  large  part  by  question  and  answer,  because 
what  he  himself  does  upon  your  suggestion  and  by  way  of 
inference  and  under  the  momentum  of  discussion,  is  of  more 
value  than  what  is  merely  loaded  upon  him  as  information. 
This  is  much  more  than  examination;  it  is  very  inadequately 
termed  recitation;  it  is  on  the  part  of  the  pupil  not  repetition 
but  reproduction;  and  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  not  inquisi- 
tion but  discovery,  adaptation,  stimulus,  encouragement, 
award.  In  its  perfection  it  demands,  of  course,  a  class  of  such 
a  size  as  not  to  forbid  individual  teaching,  the  personal  play 
of  mind  between  teacher  and  pupil,  this  and  that  actual  pupil, 
with  the  capabilities  and  idiosyncrasies  of  each  taken  into  the 
account.  On  the  other  hand  private  tuition,  the  instruction 
of  one  pupil  by  one  teacher,  does  not  afford  the  best  oppor- 


118  THE  VERY  ELECT 

tunity  for  the  catechetic  method.  There  is  lacking  the  variety, 
the  polarity,  the  parallax,  which  come  from  a  number  of  minds 
all  unlike,  and  all  presumably  pursuing  the  same  quest.  In 
this  view  "Mark  Hopkins  on  one  end  of  a  log  and  a  solitary 
student  on  the  other"  lacks  something  of  the  idea  of  a  univer- 
sity or  even  of  a  college.  The  old  legal  maxim  ires  faciunt 
collegium  may  be  enough  for  a  corporation,  but  not  enough 
for  a  college  proper.  In  most  subjects  not  less  than  ten  are 
needed  to  give  the  complexity  and  ferment  and  resiliency 
necessary  to  a  really  inspiring  class.  The  managing  of  such  a 
class  is  no  easy  task.  It  is  a  much  severer  strain  upon  intel- 
lectual effort  and  a  heavier  draft  on  intellectual  resources  than 
lecturing.  An  hour  of  it  leaves  the  instructor  exhausted. 
But  it  pays !  It  educates  the  pupil  instead  of  merely  informing 
him.  It  adds  something  every  time  to  his  grip,  and  his  grasp, 
and  his  power.  To  have  fenced  with  a  master  of  escrime,  as 
every  teacher  in  his  place  and  measure  ought  to  be,  prepares 
one  for  the  encounter  wich  error  in  the  larger  world:  to  have 
had  one's  mind  cleared  of  the  fogs  which  beset  half -knowledge 
is  to  learn  to  be  impatient  of  half-knowledge  anywhere  and 
everywhere. 

I  digress  here  for  a  moment — if  it  is  digressing — to  speak  of 
the  power  that  lies  in  the  question.  I  fancy  some  of  us  are  ex- 
periencing some  irritation  jusfc  now  in  view  of  the  excess  of  what 
are  called  questionnaires,  summonses  to  tell  in  manifold  tables 
all  we  know  and  don't  know  and  don't  want  to  know  about 
every  conceivable  subject  under  the  stars;  and  are  incapaci- 
tated from  taking  an  impartial  view  of  the  question — 
but  the  question  is  a  thing  of  power  in  the  class-room. 
To  say,  a  good  questioner,  is  almost  to  say,  a  good  teacher. 
If  I  were  to  go  on  a  tour  of  inspection  in  class-rooms,  in  quest 
of  a  teacher,  this  would  be  one  main  point  of  inquiry,  Can  he 
question  well?  The  teacher  puts  a  question  which  as  he  sees 
too  late  goes  aside  from  the  point;  he  elongates  it  to  reach  the 
point;  finds  the  matter  to  be  confused  and  tries  over  again; 


DYNAMIC  OF  CATECHETICAL  INSTRUCTION  119 

perhaps  tries  it  over  three  or  four  times  before  he  finally  gets 
in  his  interrogation  pause — his  own  mind  muddled  by  the 
effort  and  the  pupil's  mind  mazed  and  paralyzed.  Another 
teacher  makes  his  question  clear,  sharp,  direct,  searching, 
comprehensive;  if  he  has  occasion  to  repeat  it  he  does  it  in  the 
same  words;  he  requires  one  answer  to  that  question  and  no 
other.  If  the  pupil  does  not  know  the  answer  he  will  know  that 
he  does  not  know  it,  and  that  knowledge  will  be  good  for  him. 
If  he  does  know  it,  he  will  know  it  better  by  stating  it  in  the 
form  demanded  by  a  clear  question. 

But  the  question,  rightly  used,  is  more  than  a  discloser  of 
knowledge  or  ignorance.  It  is  a  stimulus  to  thought.  It 
opens  up  lines  of  inquiry;  it  starts  a  series  of  concentric  circles 
around  the  subject  in  hand.  Some  of  these  quests  must  be 
pursued  on  the  spot  while  the  interest  is  on.  Others  are 
carried  away  for  more  leisurely  inquiry.  Catechesis  which 
is  thorough  does  not  stop  with  the  end  of  the  lesson  for  the 
day.  It  goes  forth  with  the  pupil  into  his  fixed  and  permanent 
habits  of  mind;  tends  to  make  him  inquisitive,  persistent, 
appreciative  of  all  lucidity  and  completeness,  impatient  of  all 
obscurity  and  inaccuracy  and  shamming. 

We  see  then  that  the  dynamic  of  catechetical  instruction 
comes  to  its  climax  in  the  immediate  vital  contact  of  one  lead- 
ing mental  and  spiritual  personality  with  the  personalities  of  a 
group  of  pupils;  the  intellectual  and  emotional  currents  passing 
freely  to  and  fro,  spontaneous  on  both  sides,  but  always  con- 
trolled and  directed  by  the  teacher.  I  have  spoken  advisedly 
of  emotion  as  having  a  place  in  catechetical  instruction. 
Teaching  which  does  not  generate  it,  or  does  not  get  momen- 
tum from  it,  is  dull  and  spiritless.  I  have  said  also  that  this 
contact  must  be  immediate — immediate  as  to  both  time  and 
touch.  One  disability  of  the  lecturer  comes  from  his  isolation, 
his  aloofness  from  his  pupils.  He  has  the  disadvantage  which 
attends  preaching.  He  speaks  to  men,  not  at  arm's  length, 
but  from  a  remote  altitude.  There  is  no  talking  back.  The 


120  THE  VERY  ELECT 

currents  pass  only  one  way;  there  is  no  immediate  response. 
What  he  says,  however  effective,  has  time  to  get  cold  and 
stale  before  its  effects  are  available.  The  best  instruction 
is  a  matter  of  both  strategy  and  tactics.  The  professor  pre- 
pares his  plan  of  campaign;  studies  his  topography,  that  is 
to  say,  the  character  of  his  pupils;  lays  out  the  work  adapted 
to  their  needs;  parcels  it  out  by  sections  and  fields;  plans  for 
his  auxiliary  forces.  Then,  before  the  battle  comes  on,  he 
has  inured  the  pupils  to  habits  of  preparation,  to  the  antici- 
pation of  sharp  conflict  with  a  view  to  inducing  every  one  to 
come  with  faculties  in  best  condition,  not  fagged  by  excessive 
physical  exertion,  not  dulled  by  loss  of  sleep,  not  stupefied  by 
narcotics.  In  the  class-room  he  employs  tactics  which  in  part 
are  the  traditional  and  well-established  methods  of  an  old-time 
professor — not  discarding  them  because  they  are  old — and 
in  part  the  product  of  his  own  philosophy;  taking  care  that 
whatever  else  his  class-room  may  be,  it  shall  never  be  drowsy, 
always  alert,  breezy,  and  at  times  it  may  be,  even  hilarious. 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING   TOGETHER 
A  VESPER  HOMILY 

IN  THE  course  of  my  last  summer's  reading,  I  came  some- 
where upon  this  expression,  "The  Fine  and  Serious  Art  of 
Living  Together."  It  struck  me  as  a  wonderfully  happy 
expression  of  what  our  college  life  ought  to  be,  both  for  itself 
and  for  the  after-life  of  college-bred  men  and  women.  Living 
Together  in  a  worthy  and  commendable  way  is  an  Art:  it 
is  a  Serious  Art:  and  it  is  a  Fine  Art.  It  is  an  Art.  Art 
has  been  denned  as  making  an  idea,  real — or,  in  terms  of 
philosophy,  making  the  subjective,  objective.  Living  To- 
gether is,  for  human  beings,  a  matter  of  volition,  choice,  plan. 
Certain  animals  are  gregarious  by  nature,  and  Nature  deter- 
mines for  them  the  methods,  and,  so  to  speak,  the  customs, 
according  to  which  they  herd  together.  With  them  living 
together  is  an  instinct,  not  an  art.  But  men  and  women, 
in  order  to  live  together  in  accordance  with  their  true  nature, 
have  to  exercise  thought,  deliberation — have  to  study  adap- 
tation of  means  to  ends,  to  adopt  some  constructive  principles 
of  association.  They  need  to  determine  why  they  are  living 
together,  and  in  what  ways  they  can  best  attain  the  purpose 
for  which  they  are  living  together.  They  need  to  realize  in 
their  minds  the  inherent  absurdity,  the  self-defeating  selfish- 
ness, the  inhumanity,  of  such  a  life  as  Thoreau  holds  up  to 
admiration — the  life  which  would  get  all  the  benefits  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  return  only  the  moroseness  of  savagery.  It  is  some- 
times said  that  society  is  made  up  of  individuals,  and  that  what 
is  good  for  the  individual  is  good  for  society.  The  practical 
outcome  of  this  philosophy  of  life  would  be  "every  man  for 
himself."  It  is  tersely  expressed  in  Cain's  question,  "Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper?"  Yes,  St.  Paul  says,  you  are,  "no  man 

121 


122  THE  VERY  ELECT 

liveth  to  himself. "  He  does  not  put  it  as  a  duty — no  man  ought 
to  live  to  himself — but  as  a  fact :  no  man  does  live,  or  can  live, 
to  himself.  To  live  together  is  a  human  necessity,  and  those 
who  live  together  must  affect  each  other.  The  question  is, 
how  they  can  affect  each  other  for  good,  for  the  best  possible; 
and  this  craves  careful  consideration.  Wise  and  helpful 
Living  Together,  then,  is  an  Art,  is  a  policy.  We  have  long 
known,  and  Maeterlinck  has  impressively  reminded  us,  that 
Bees  have  a  policy — a  wonderfully  adjusted  system  by  which 
they  live  and  work  together.  Modern  researches  have  shown 
us  that  the  same  is  true  of  Ants,  and  quite  likely  of  many 
other,  possibly  of  all,  creatures  who  live  together  in  colonies, 
or  as  we  may  say  in  colleges.  Doctor  Worcester  and  Pro- 
fessor Perkins  have  found  a  marvelous  kind  of  living  together 
in  the  little  red  spiders  which  infest  our  rose  bushes.  If  we 
men  and  women  could  find  by  human  art  a  way  of  living 
together  as  wisely  as  these  inferior  creatures  do  after  their 
kind,  we  should  have  solved  most  of  our  social  and  political 
problems.  But  our  very  intelligence,  coupled  with  our 
freedom,  makes  our  task  of  living  together  a  difficult  one. 
It  is  for  us  an  Art. 

And  a  serious  Art.  It  is  an  Art  which  requires,  as  two 
essential  conditions  of  success,  first,  serious  thought,  and 
second,  a  serious  moral  purpose.  For  men  and  women  to 
live  together  without  serious  thought  about  the  right  way 
to  live  together,  is  to  invite,  and  ensure  mistakes,  blunders, 
wrongs,  unintentional  but  none  the  less  hurtful,  wounds 
which  leave  life-long  scars,  alienations  where  harmonies  ought 
to  have  been,  enmities  which  were  born  of  thoughtlessness 
and  grew  into  crimes.  But  the  most  regrettable  result  of 
want  of  thought  regarding  our  social  life  is  what  is  lost  thereby. 
Think  for  example,  of  the  possibilities  of  such  living  together 
as  we  have  in  this  University  company.  What  opportunities 
for  friendships  which  would  enrich  all  after  life!  What  open- 
ings for  kindness,  for  helpfulness,  for  gracious  ministries, 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING  TOGETHER  123 

and  all  that  greater  blessedness  which  comes  from  giving 
more  than  we  receive!  If  college  students  have  to  forego 
the  enjoyments  and  benefits  of  domestic  life,  they  have  what 
may  be  a  greater  substitute  for  it,  the  companionship  of  the 
most  select  community  known  to  our  civilization,  the  com- 
munity of  men  and  women,  youthful,  young,  middle-aged, 
mature,  all  engaged  in  intellectual  pursuits  and  presumably 
devoted  to  high  ideals  of  life.  What  a  mistake  it  would  be 
to  lose  the  best  of  these  opportunities,  or  any  of  them,  for 
lack  of  the  serious  thought  by  which  alone  we  can  fully  appre- 
ciate the  immeasurable  good  they  offer  to  us! 

But  in  order  to  realize  the  best  of  living  together  we  must 
also  enter  into  it  with  a  serious  moral  purpose.  It  requires 
resolution,  and  courage,  and  patience,  and  good-will,  and 
large  amounts  of  them,  to  live  well  together.  No  man  is 
fit  to  live  with  others  who  has  a  soft,  easily  impressed  nature, 
a  feeble  will,  who  is  the  easy  victim  of  a  jest,  or  a  taunt,  or 
a  sneer;  who  does  not  know  how  to  hold  his  own  in  the  face 
of  a  smart  speech,  or  a  bad  argument.  There  is  no  college 
exercise  so  important  that  I  would  not  give  it  up  if  I  could 
secure  instead  of  it  the  reading  of  the  first  chapter  of  Thack- 
eray's Newcomes — the  chapter  in  which  the  good  uncle  takes 
his  nephew  to  the  Cave  of  Harmony,  that  the  lad  may  see 
how  jovial  spirits  have  a  good  time,  but  the  moment  an  old 
roue  starts  a  ribald  song,  the  gallant  and  brave  gentleman 
stalks  out  of  the  room  in  high  indignation  and  with  splendid 
rebuke!  I  doubt  whether  there  is  any  spot  in  life,  whether 
on  the  battle-field,  in  the  drawing-room  of  the  fast  set,  in 
the  midnight  revel  where  men  who  have  forgotten  God  and 
all  the  Commandments  meet  to  laugh  down  all  good  things, 
I  doubt  whether  there  is  any  place  where  it  costs  more,  or 
means  more,  or  does  more  good,  to  stand  up  and  say  and  do 
the  right  unpopular  thing,  than  at  times  in  college.  But 
the  man  who  says  it  and  does  it  is  respected  and  remembered, 
and  in  after  life  he  remembers  it  himself,  and  is  glad  and 
happy  in  the  remembrance. 


124  THE  VERY  ELECT 

When  we  say  that  living  together  in  the  best  way  is  a 
Serious  Art,  we  do  not  mean  that  one  should  be  solemn  and 
glum,  that  he  should  look  upon  the  gay  and  frolicsome  side 
of  life  with  suspicion.  It  is  meant  only  that  he  should  do 
all  parts  of  his  college  life,  especially  the  social  part,  with 
something  of  the  same  spirit  with  which  he  does  some  parts 
— playing  ball  for  instance.  I  am  always  impressed  with 
the  seriousness  of  the  modern  game  of  baseball — indeed  it 
sometimes  seems  to  me  too  serious  for  real  recreation.  But 
it  is  the  perfection  of  a  certain  kind  of  art — of  very  serious 
art.  If  teaching  and  study,  if  politics  and  religion,  were  con- 
ducted with  a  temper  as  serious,  and  a  devotion  as  strenuous 
and  whole-hearted,  what  angels  we  should  be! 

But  Living  Together,  especially  living  together  in  College, 
though  a  serious  art,  is  also  a  Fine  Art — indeed  partly  because 
it  is  a  serious  art  is  it  a  Fine  Art.  An  Art  becomes  fine  when 
its  creations  are  produced  under  the  influence  of  imagination 
and  sentiment.  Any  art  of  man,  in  whatever  sphere,  becomes 
a  fine  art  when  it  idealizes  what  it  works  upon — that  is  when 
it  sets  before  itself  an  image  of  perfection  and  strives  to  realize 
it.  On  the  New  England  sea-coast  where  I  have  for  several 
years  spent  a  part  of  my  summer  vacation,  the  dwelling- 
houses  of  ten  generations  are  still  standing.  The  first  houses 
were  necessarily  rude — mere  shelters  from  storm  and  cold 
and  wild  beasts.  By  and  by  elements  of  shape  and  comeliness 
began  to  appear.  The  idea  of  what  a  house  ought  to  be  grew 
along  with  the  means  to  realize  the  idea.  The  house  became 
the  creation  of  an  artist.  And  finally — no,  not  finally,  for  art 
knows  no  finality,  but  at  length,  the  same  imagination  and 
feeling  which  conceived  the  Billings  Library — I  mean  H.  H. 
Richardson's — placed  upon  the  shore  of  Sippecan  Bay  an 
ideal  sea-side  cottage,  simple,  picturesque,  home-like,  effective 
both  for  use  and  for  admiration.  In  this  same  way  all 
true  art  tends  to  become  fine  art.  Not  our  houses  only, 
but  our  furniture,  our  tools,  our  clothes,  our  books,  our  man- 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING  TOGETHER  125 

ners,  our  speech,  come  under  influences  that  tend  to  make 
them  finer,  more  artistic.  Now  the  finest  of  all  the  fine  arts 
is  the  Fine  Art  of  Living  Together,  genially,  gracefully,  nobly. 
A  gentleman,  a  gentlewoman,  is  one  who  is  seriously  cul- 
tivating the  Fine  Art  of  Living  with  other  people.  The  first 
requisite  in  this  art  is  to  conceive  of  it  as  something  worth 
while.  What  Michael  Angelo  said  of  his  art  is  in  a  sense  true 
of  this  art:  "she  is  a  jealous  goddess — she  demands  the  whole 
and  entire  man."  The  man  we  call  a  "boor"  is  one  who  does 
not  think  it  worth  while  to  take  any  pains  about  his  living 
with  other  people.  There  are  many  who  do  not  deserve  so 
harsh  a  name,  and  who  yet  are  not  good  to  live  with,  because 
while  they  may  take  a  little  pains,  they  are  not  willing  to  take 
enough  pains  to  live  with  other  people.  For  we  must  not 
disguise  it  that  to  do  this  thing  well — as  to  do  most  things — 
we  must  take  a  good  deal  of  pains.  It  is  easy  to  look  over  a 
company  of  those  whom  we  know  and  to  divide  them  into  those 
whom  it  is  pleasant  to  live  with,  because  they  are  willing  to 
take  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  make  living  with  them  agreeable, 
and  those  who  will  take  no  pains  or  only  very  little.  There 
are  those  who  practically  say:  "I  will  not  put  myself  out 
much  for  other  people :  I  want  my  own  way :  I  want  to  say  rude 
things  when  I  feel  like  it.  I  have  a  knack  at  repartee,  or  sar- 
casm, or  mimicry,  and  I  like  to  indulge  it.  I  don't  like  to 
be  bored.  I  don't  ' suffer  fools  gladly,'  and  Mr.  Carlyle 
and  I  agree  that  most  folks  are  fools.  I  am  a  frank  sort  of 
fellow,  and  if  I  don't  like  A,  or  B,  or  C,  I  don't  conceal  my 
opinion  of  them."  What  these  persons  do  not  say  of  them- 
selves, or  hear  said,  but  what  other  people  cannot  help  saying 
or  be  blamed  for  saying,  is  "You  are  conceited,  and  sullen 
and  irritable,  and  you  are  not  good  to  live  with.  You  have 
not  learned — you  evidently  do  not  care  to  learn — the  first 
rudiments  in  the  Fine  Art  of  Living  Together." 

This  brings  us  to  say  that  there  are  two  or  three  very 
important  elements  in  the  Fine  Art  of  Living  Together  on 
which  we  will  dwell  for  a  few  moments. 


126  THE  VERY  ELECT 

The  first  and  most  essential  is  that  we  recognize  each  other's 
rights.  As  human  beings  living  in  a  state  of  civilization, 
as  members  of  a  social,  civil  and  political  community,  we  all 
have  rights.  But  that  means  not  only  that  I  have  rights,  but 
that  other  people  also  have  rights,  and  that  I  have  no  rights 
except  in  so  far  as  I  recognize  other  people's  rights.  Rights 
are  not  independent  but  mutual.  I  have  no  right  to  the  pursuit 
of  my  happiness  unless  I  recognize  the  right  of  other  people 
to  the  pursuit  of  their  happiness.  The  difference  between 
barbarism  and  civilization  is  that  in  barbarism  men  have  to 
get  their  rights  with  a  club,  and  in  civilization  men  get  their 
rights  by  recognizing  other  people's  rights.  In  our  college 
community  we  all  have  our  rights.  Professors,  Instructors, 
Students,  Janitors  and  Servants;  Neighbors,  Citizens,  Sick 
People  and  Young  Children,  all  have  certain  rights.  Instruc- 
tors have  the  right  to  respectful  and  deferential  treatment 
from  Students.  Students  have  the  right  to  painstaking  in- 
struction and  kindly  guidance  from  Professors.  Neighbors 
have  the  right  to  a  quiet  and  orderly  vicinage,  by  day  and  by 
night.  Citizens  have  a  right  to  have  due  respect  paid  to  their 
property,  their  streets,  theatres  and  all  public  buildings,  their 
walls,  gates,  signs,  and  all  their  personal  belongings.  And 
there  is  one  right  which  we  all  have,  the  dearest  and  most 
cherished  of  all  our  rights — the  right  to  our  feelings,  to  our 
just  pride,  to  our  personal  sensitiveness  and  self-respect. 
The  more  highly  men  and  women  are  cultivated,  the  more 
sensitive  they  become  to  affronts  offered  to  their  feelings. 
But  it  is  a  curious  anomaly  of  human  nature  that  the  sensi- 
tiveness to  offense  in  one's  self  is  not  always  offset  by  a  pro- 
portionate delicacy  with  regard  to  the  same  sensitiveness  in 
others.  Now  if  anywhere  in  the  world  living  together  should 
be  carried  on  with  a  scrupulously  painstaking  regard  to  the 
feelings  of  others,  it  should  be  in  our  college  community.  I 
have  given  above  a  definition  of  a  gentleman  and  a  gentle- 
woman. I  will  extend  it  a  little  by  saying,  a  gentleman  or 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING  TOGETHER  127 

a  gentlewoman  is  one  who  thinks  more  of  other  people's 
feelings  than  of  his  or  her  own  rights,  and  more  of  other  people's 
rights  than  of  his  or  her  own  feelings. 

Next  it  is  to  be  noted  that  all  the  Fine  Arts  have  certain 
canons  of  art,  certain  principles  which  have  become  established 
and  fixed,  as  standards  of  judgment  and  action.  Even  in  a 
region  as  free  as  Art,  some  things  become  settled  for  all  time, 
and  do  not  need  to  be  determined  anew  by  each  successive 
generation.  So  in  the  Fine  Art  of  Living  Together  there  are 
certain  conventionalities  which  good  sense  and  good  feeling 
have  established  for  helping  social  life  to  go  (5n  with  smooth- 
ness and  decorum.  As  a  general  rule  these  conventionalities 
are  able  to  give  good  reasons  for  themselves,  and  should  com- 
mand our  easy  acquiescence  and  adoption.  But  even  when 
they  do  not,  when  they  appear  to  be  without  good  reason, 
and  are  to  some  extent  irksome,  it  is  better  to  conform  to 
them,  than  to  break  in  upon  the  general  order  by  being  singu- 
lar. The  man  in  Scripture  who  went  to  the  wedding  and  had 
not  on  the  wedding  garment,  is  the  typical  example  of  the 
social  non-conformist.  The  man  who  asserts  his  independence 
and  by  assumption  his  superiority,  by  refusing  to  dress  as 
other  people  do,  or  to  use  the  conventional  forms  of  polite 
manners  or  speech,  may  think  that  he  is  obeying  his  conscience 
by  refusing  to  bow  in  the  House  of  Rimmon,  when  perhaps 
he  is  only  unwilling  to  take  a  little  pains  to  carry  into  details 
the  Fine  Art  of  Living  Together.  We  may  find  an  illustra- 
tion— not  the  best  but  it  happens  to  be  pertinent — in  the 
matter  of  wearing  academic  dress.  Every  one  feels  a  little 
foolish  the  first  time  he  gets  on  gown  and  hood  and  cap. 
The  reasons  for  wearing  it  may  not  be  very  cogent  in  the 
forum  of  plain  common  sense.  They  are,  briefly,  that  the  dress 
is  a  significant  survival  of  the  garb  which  once  distinguished 
the  scholarly  guild  in  the  old  University — that  it  serves  to 
preserve  memorial  associations  and  traditions — and  that  in  a 
great  academic  function  it  adds  something  to  the  festal  aspect 


128  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  the  occasion.  It  has  as  much  sense  as,  and  no  more  than, 
the  robes  of  the  Judge  on  the  Bench,  the  veil  and  orange- 
blossoms  of  the  bride,  the  starched  shirt-front  of  evening  dress, 
and,  some  one  may  add,  the  cap  and  bells  of  the  court-fool. 
But  as  almost  all  colleges  now  follow  the  custom,  it  seems  like 
claiming  .for  itself  an  austere  superiority  of  taste  or  virtue,  for 
an  institution  to  be  alone,  or  almost  alone,  in  dissent. 

One  other  attribute  of  gracious  Living  Together  is  the  taking 
a  kindly  interest  in  one  another's  happenings  and  doings — 
what  the  French  happily  express  by  their  word,  "camaraderie." 
It  is  a  very  welcome  and  helpful  good  fellowship  which  prompts 
one  to  uphold,  defend,  encourage,  cheer,  and  when  occasion 
offers,  applaud  one's  partners  and  associates.  In  our  college 
life  together,  there  are  times  and  seasons  when  the  manifesta- 
tions of  good  will  and  kindly  feeling  are  specially  grateful, 
and  the  withholding  of  them  specially  trying  and  even  morti- 
fying. College  folks  are  a  sensitive  set,  sensitive  to  approba- 
tion, sensitive  to  slight  and  hurt.  Students  have  been  known 
to  carry  through  life  resentment  for  a  slight  put  upon  them 
by  an  instructor,  or  by  a  fellow  student.  It  is  a  college 
tradition  that  a  student  must  take  a  joke  against  himself  with 
good  nature.  A  mere  joke  which  will  slip  off  like  water  from 
a  duck's  back,  he  ought.  But  if,  either  with  malice  or  thought- 
lessness, you  put  acid  into  the  water,  it  will  not  all  run  off, 
and  you  must  not  expect  the  victim  to  enjoy  the  smart.  I 
make  no  allusion  to  personalities  in  our  own  Class-day  exer- 
cises and  college  publications,  which  so  far  as  I  know  are  not 
open  to  severe  censure,  but  in  another  institution  I  once 
witnessed  a  so-called  joke  put  by  his  classmates  upon  one  just 
about  to  graduate,  which  to  have  forgiven,  had  the  case  been 
mine,  would  have  required  a  great  deal  more  Christianity 
than  I  have,  and  which  would  have  embittered  the  memory 
of  Class-day  and  Classmates  and  College  for  all  after  life. 
Not  to  be  able  to  distinguish  between  a  joke  that  is  harmless 
and  one  that  hurts,  shows  bluntness  of  intellectual  discern- 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING  TOGETHER  129 

ment,  while  to  intend  the  hurt  under  cover  of  sport  is  both  cruel 
and  cowardly — cruel  because  the  laugh  aggravates  the  hurt, 
and  cowardly  because  the  assailant  slinks  from  the  frontal  at- 
tack. But  let  us  speak  rather  of  the  kindnesses  we  can  do  to 
one  another.  A  certain  college  has  a  song  describing  how  the 
President  once  bowed  to  a  freshman  on  the  campus,  and  the 
freshman  fell  down  dead  with  the  shock  of  surprise.  I  take 
the  lesson  of  that  to  myself.  The  time  was  when  I  knew  and 
could  call  by  name  not  only  every  student  in  college  at  the 
time,  but  almost  every  living  graduate  and  old  student  not  a 
graduate.  It  is  the  one  regret  attending  our  greatly  increasing 
numbers,  that  I  can  no  longer  do  this.  But  along  with  this 
increase  in  numbers  has  come  into  our  college  life  of  today  a 
greater  intimacy  and  a  kindlier  relation  between  instructors 
and  students.  It  is  no  longer  a  reproach  to  a  student  in  the 
eyes  of  his  fellows  that  he  cultivates  acquaintance  with  a 
professor,  or  his  family;  it  is  no  longer  a  matter  of  surprise 
if  a  professor  is  seen  walking  arm-in-arm  with  a  student,  or 
if  he  invites  him  to  his  room.  This  more  intimate  social  life 
affords  countless  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of  what  I 
have  called  "camaraderie."  Has  a  professor  taken  special 
pains  to  write  a  paper,  or  prepare  an  exercise,  which  he  hopes 
to  make  specially  helpful  to  his  class,  and  do  you  find  it  so, 
thank  him  not  only  by  general  applause  but  by  the  personal 
word  of  appreciation.  We  are  very  human,  we  teachers,  and 
are  none  the  worse  for  a  little  praise.  When  the  seniors 
foregathered  with  me  last  June  I  read  to  them  a  letter  from  an 
old  graduate  in  which  he  spoke  in  terms  of  warm  admiration 
for  his  old  instructors  here,  naming  and  characterizing  them 
one  by  one.  It  was  too  late  in  many  cases — but  I  hoped  the 
seniors  would  take  the  hint  and  say  a  word  of  appreciation 
and  gratitude  to  their  instructors  before  it  was  too  late. 

And  let  us  instructors  cultivate  the  grace  of  admiration 
as  regards  our  students.  Those  wrho  go  from  us  to  other  insti- 
tutions bid  us  be  thankful  for  the  material  we  have  to  work 

9 


130  THE  VERY  ELECT 

with.  Certainly  we  are  unfit  for  our  work  if  we  do  not  discern 
in  the  body  of  students  we  have  here  " promise  and  potency" 
enough  to  call  forth  all  our  capacity  for  admiration  and  for 
enthusiasm  in  work.  But  do  we  make  as  generous  a  use  of 
our  opportunities  for  approval  and  commendation  as  we 
might?  Are  we  as  eager  to  praise  as  we  have  a  right  to  be? 
When  a  class  is  interested,  but  a  student  here  and  there  is 
actively  and  provokingly  listless;  when  the  bluebooks  reveal 
only  crass  ignorance  or  slovenly  and  inaccurate  attempts  at 
knowledge;  when  line  upon  line  and  precept  upon  precept 
fail  to  produce  any  effect  except  to  show  that  the  pupil  be- 
longs to  the  class  of  whom  the  Proverb  says  that  he  "has  a 
price  put  in  his  hand  to  gain  knowledge  but  has  no  heart 
thereto;"  then  is  the  time  to  apply  in  all  its  rigor  the  maxim 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review:  Judex  damnatur  cum  nocens 
absolvitur.  But  when  a  student  makes  a  specially  happy 
translation — which  is  his  own — of  a  difficult  passage;  when  he 
offers  a  neat  solution  of  a  hard  problem;  when  he  shows  real 
grasp  of  a  question  in  science,  or  philosophy,  or  history — 
then  let  the  instructor  applaud  as  he  would  be  applauded. 
Or  suppose  a  situation  still  more  appealing:  when  the  student 
comes  to  one  of  the  hard  places  in  his  intellectual  or  spiritual 
experience — and  to  such  places  all  students  come — places 
where  he  needs  sympathy  and  encouragement  and  stimulus 
— then  and  there  be  his  friend  in  need,  and  not  only  he  but 
you  also  will  have  found  a  friend  indeed.  In  passing  literary 
judgments  we  have  found  what  is  almost  a  new  word.  For- 
merly it  was  all  "criticism."  Now  it  is  "an  appreciation." 
Let  us  all  appreciate  one  another  better. 

So  then  living  together  wisely,  and  genially,  and  helpfully, 
is  an  Art — not  an  instinct  thafc  takes  care  of  itself  without 
any  thought  or  plan — a  Serious  Art,  demanding  our  best 
thought  and  endeavor,  and  repaying  it — a  Fine  Art,  the  finest 
of  the  Fine  Arts,  because  its  ideal  is  the  highest  and  noblest — 
and  even  more  than  an  Art,  a  Religion — for  what  is  it  but 


THE  ART  OF  LIVING  TOGETHER  131 

giving  our  best  of  mind  and  heart  to  vitalizing  our  Lord's 
precept : 

"Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto  you,  do  ye 
even  so  to  them." 

And  the  Apostle's  injunctions: 

"Be  kindly  affectioned  one  to  another,  in  honor  preferring 
one  another." 

" Rejoice  with  them  that  do  rejoice:  weep  with  them  that 
weep." 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY 
AN  ADDRESS  OF  WELCOME  :  SEPTEMBER,  1908 

ONE  of  the  partners  in  an  intellectual  enterprise  said  to  an 
interviewer,  as  reported,  "My  role  is  a  difficult  one  and  you 
know  I  love  difficulty."  It  was  a  wonderfully  fine  saying,  and 
has  depths  of  meaning  in  it.  Note,  I  pray  you,  the  psychologi- 
cal significance  of  the  "and"  not  "but,"  "I  love  difficulty "- 
that  is,  "  I  love  my  work  not  in  spite  of  its  difficulty  but  because 
of  it."  Is  it  a  hard  saying?  Yes,  it  probes,  it  tests,  it  selects 
us.  It  is,  as  Scripture  says  of  the  word  of  God,  "a  discerner 
of  the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart."  It  divides  us  into 
those  who  are  intellectually  brave — aye,  and  morally  brave, 
too — and  those  who  are  intellectually  and  morally  weak.  It 
decides  for  us,  among  many  things,  whether  or  not  we  belong 
in  a  college  community;  whether  we  are  worthy  to  be  intrusted 
with  the  responsibilities  of  the  intellectual  life.  It  would  be  a 
good  motto  for  a  university.  If  Plato  would  have  in  the  Acad- 
emy no  one  ignorant  of  geometry,  we  might  well  write  over  the 
gate  to  the  university,  "Let  no  one  enter  here  who  does  not 
love  difficulty."  Let  it  be  the  theme  of  this  opening  service. 

We  begin  with  one  or  two  distinctions.  First,  that  the  dif- 
ficulty which  we  are  to  love  must  be  inherent  in  the  nature 
of  the  subject — necessary  to  it,  constituting  in  part  at  least 
its  worth  as  well  as  its  challenge.  Difficulty  which  is  factitious, 
extraneous,  superinduced  over  and  above  what  is  essential  to 
the  matter  in  hand,  is  of  no  advantage  and  presents  no  claim  on 
our  respect — involves  in  short  mere  waste  of  energy.  If  we 
define  waste  as  the  amount  lost  by  misdirected  effort,  there 
is  an  immense  amount  of  waste  incurred  in  overcoming  un- 
necessary, irrelevant,  and  we  may  say,  stupid  difficulty. 
The  difficulty  we  love  must  be  a  difficulty  we  can  respect  as 

132 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  133 

being  in  itself  due,  and  legitimate,  and  standing  where  it 
belongs. 

Next,  to  love  difficulty  means  much  more  than  to  be  willing 
to  do  hard  work  for  the  sake  of  an  end  to  be  attained.  Hard 
work  may  be  where  no  difficulty  is — a  patient,  persistent, 
jog-trot  of  work  all  on  a  level — no  barriers  to  surmount,  no 
heights  to  climb,  no  dragons  to  slay — with  no  gleam  of  the 
imagination,  no  leap  of  the  emotions,  a  mere  effort  of  will. 
The  theme  is,  that  the  difficulty  we  love  is  welcome  for  itself; 
that  it  enhances  in  our  minds  the  value  of  the  thing  it  encom- 
passes ;  that  we  do  not  merely  not  shrink  before  difficulty,  nor 
merely  tolerate  it  and  make  the  best  of  it,  but  love  it;  that 
while  we  may  not  love  this  and  that  form  in  which  it  presents 
itself,  it  is  not  difficulty  itself  that  we  dislike;  that  difficulty 
itself,  less  in  one  form  and  more  in  another — difficulty  in  itself 
considered — we  admire  and  welcome  and  love. 

But  here  we  meet  at  the  outset  the  assertion  that  the  highest 
of  all  work,  the  work  of  genius,  is  done  most  easily — does 
itself,  so  to  speak,  with  little  or  no  conscious  effort  on  the  part 
of  the  doer.  This  truth,  for  it  is  a  truth,  we  might  pass  over 
with  the  remark  that  it  concerns  only  the  few  exceptional  cases 
and  need  not  hamper  us  in  dealing  with  the  usual  mind,  were 
it  not  true  that  work  is  easy  to  any  of  us  according  as  it  is 
adapted  to  our  special  gifts,  which  seems  to  involve  the  infer- 
ence that  nature  warns  us  off  from  what  is  especially  difficult 
as  not  being  our  task.  But  it  still  remains  true  that  even  genius 
has  its  heights  to  climb  which  are  as  difficult  to  it  as  lower 
tasks  are  to  other  men.  The  most  gifted  men  are  not  doing 
their  best  until  they  have  reached  the  spaces  where  difficult 
obstacles  confront  them,  and  they  too  fail  if  they  do  not  love 
their  difficulties.  Even  Shakespeare,  however  easily  he  may 
have  thrown  off  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing,"  we  cannot  con- 
ceive of  as  living  jauntily  and  sleeping  sweetly  o 'nights  when 
he  was  working  out  the  tragic  progress  of  Lear  or  Macbeth  or 
Othello. 


134  THE  VERY  ELECT 

We  come  back  then  to  our  hard  saying  that  the  love  of 
difficulty  is  essential  to  high  attainment.  It  may  make  the 
approach  to  it  easier  if  we  remind  ourselves  of  the  ways  in 
which  we  already  concede  the  principle.  What  is  it  that 
gives  at  once  fascination  and  dignity  to  athletic  sports?  What 
has  caused  the  languid  interest  which  barely  kept  alive  the 
old  ball  games  to  mount  into  the  spectacular  enthusiasm 
which  now  magnifies  them  into  almost  national  events?  Is 
it  not  that  to  excel  in  these  games  has  become  more  and  more 
difficult;  that  the  conditions  of  the  games  have  become  more 
and  more  complex  and  exacting,  and  therefore  more  selective 
and  distinguishing?  When  it  was  proposed  a  few  years 
ago  to  make  football  a  game  largely  free  from  danger,  in  short 
a  less  difficult  game,  was  there  not  a  general  refusal  among 
vigorous  lads  to  be  made  into  " sissies"  in  their  sports?  What 
gives  mountain  climbing  its  zest  but  its  difficulty?  The  scorn 
with  which  the  new  railway  tunnels  up  to  the  summits  of  the 
Jungfrau  and  the  Matterhorn  are  regarded  by  mountain  climb- 
ers— the  disappointment  of  the  new  generation  that  there  are 
no  more  such  challenges  to  face — sound  the  same  note.  When 
Nansen  came  to  this  city  to  tell  us  about  his  attempt  to  reach 
the  North  Pole,  a  citizen  said  to  him,  "I  cannot  see  why  you 
should  make  so  much  ado  to  reach  the  North  Pole.  It  may 
be  my  ignorance." 

"It  is,"  said  Nansen,  and  he  said  no  more.  What  he  might 
have  said  in  words  as  he  did  in  deeds  was:  "The  North  Pole 
is  a  challenge  to  humanity.  Up  there  in  its  solitude,  it  says, 
'I  am  your  superior.  You  boast  of  your  prowess;  I  laugh  at 
it.  I  defy  you.  I  am  invincible,  and  you,  after  all,  are  puny 
and  outdone.' 7: 

But  the  spirit  of  man  says,  "You  are  matter  and  I  am 
soul,  and  therefore,  though  you  are  difficult,  you  are  not  in- 
vincible. I  accept  your  challenge.  I  return  your  defiance, 
and  here  I  go  in  for  one  more  trial  at  you."  And  when  the 
North  Pole  is  reached,  as  it  certainly  will  be,  there  will  come 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  135 

the  perhaps  harder  search  for  the  South  Pole,  and  when  that 
is  found,  and  the  last  inaccessible  mountain  climbed,  then, 
unless  new  problems  now  unguessed  arise,  man  will  need  and 
get  a  new  earth,  with  new  physical  difficulties  to  be  overcome, 
or  he  will  degenerate  into  a  being  whose  muscles  will  become 
flaccid,  and  his  endurance  tamed,  because  there  are  no  Jung- 
fraus  to  climb,  no  Poles  to  reach,  no  more  worlds  to  conquer. 

What  we  need  to  see  is  that  this  principle  holds  all  through 
life;  that  to  overcome  difficulty  is  what  in  the  main  gives 
zest  and  joy  to  life;  that  what  comes  easily  is  little  prized; 
that  what  is  gotten  by  the  hardest  seems  to  us  most  worth 
while.  It  is  one  of  the  great  and  solemn  facts  of  the  universe 
that  the  really  good  things  are  the  things  hard  to  get.  In 
primitive  life  few,  very  few,  roots  and  berries  which  men 
may  have  for  the  picking  barely  sustain  an  existence  which 
has  no  real  pleasures.  When  man  began  to  use  his  cunning  to 
entrap  the  fishes  and  fight  the  wild  beasts,  his  food  began 
to  have  a  good  taste.  In  some  torrid  countries  now  where 
there  are  mangoes  enough  to  live  on  over  tomorrow,  men  will 
not  work,  and  they  live  a  life  just  one  degree  above  sleep. 
A  less  indulgent  climate  teaches  men  first  the  necessity  and 
next  the  joy  of  work,  and  rewards  them  with  the  real  luxuries 
of  food  and  clothing  and  household  comfort.  The  great  law 
of  advancing  civilization  is  that  Nature  will  work  for  man 
only  if  he  will  work  with  her  for  himself.  "Hitch  your  wagon 
to  a  star."  Yes,  but  the  difficulty  comes  in  the  hitching. 
That  astronomical  harnessing  will  cost  you  infinite  climbing 
and  struggle.  I  say  this  is  a  law  of  the  universe,  and  it  is  a 
great  point  gained  in  life  to  learn  that  a  law  of  the  universe 
cannot  be  beaten.  Some  men  are  always  trying  to  beat  this 
law  of  the  universe,  to  get  the  good  things  of  the  universe 
without  conquering  the  difficulties  which  it  has  set  before  all 
its  good  things.  They  would  evade  the  difficulty  instead  of 
overcoming  it,  would  reach  the  good  by  shiftiness  and  trickery, 
thinking  like  Simon  Magus  that  the  gifts  of  God  can  be  had 


136  THE  VERY  ELECT 

in  some  way  of  craft.  Some  men  deceive  themselves  by  accept- 
ing the  semblance  of  the  good  thing  for  its  reality.  They  try 
to  get  the  pleasure  of  hunger  not  by  labor  but  by  condiments 
and  stimulants.  They  would  buy  a  parchment  in  place  of 
studying  for  an  education.  They  contract  a  debt  and  play  that 
they  have  got  wealth.  They  would  wear  a  sweater  with  the 
"V"  without  earning  it.  But  the  only  persons  they  deceive 
are  themselves.  The  universe  goes  on  keeping  its  really  good 
things  for  those  who  earn  them  and  for  those  only. 

There  are  two  possible  attitudes  which  one  may  take  when 
confronted  with  a  serious  difficulty.  A  third  supposable 
attitude  we  will  not  consider  worth  thinking  of,  namely,  the 
attitude  of  slothfulness,  feebleness  and  cowardice,  which  leaves 
the  gauntlet  for  others  to  pick  up — which  says  of  everything 
really  worth  while,  "It  isn't  worth  while,"  le  jeu  ne  vaut 
pas  la  chandelle,  which  slinks  into  the  shade  and  lets  the  great 
opportunity  go  by.  Of  these  we  will  only  imitate  Dante's 
fine  scorn  as  we  "look  and  pass."  The  first  thinkable  atti- 
tude is:  "I  accept  the  inevitable.  I  do  not  love  difficulty 
but  I  see  it  everywhere  in  my  path.  I  am  not  going  to  swerve 
from  my  path  because  of  it,  I  shall  shut  my  teeth  and  brace 
my  nerves  and  steady  my  will  and  go  at  it,  and  keep  going  at  it. 
If  the  habit  makes  it  easier,  all  the  better.  If  patient  contin- 
uance in  it  begets  anything  better  than  mere  persistence, 
any  elevation  or  enthusiasm,  better  still.  But  I  don't  look 
for  it.  I  don't  depend  on  it.  I  am  in  for  a  long,  hard  struggle 
and  for  the  good  I  know  such  a  struggle  will  bring  to  me." 
This  attitude  is  not  to  be  despised.  It  wins  many  second 
prizes.  It  does  well  much  of  the  necessary  routine  work  of  the 
world.  It  may  reach  a  kind  of  heroism.  But  it  is  not  the 
ideal.  The  true  attitude  is,  "I  love  difficulty.  The  sight  of 
it,  the  thought  of  it,  thrills  and  energizes  me.  I  am  in  my  ele- 
ment when  I  am  facing  it.  I  am  only  half  awake,  only  half 
alive,  when  I  am  not  battling  with  it.  When  it  is  most  formid- 
able, most  defiant,  then  I  am  most  eager  to  meet  it,  and  even 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  137 

when  for  the  moment  I  am  baffled  by  it,  I  am  more  than  ever 
determined  to  push  my  assault  upon  it  to  a  victory." 

The  comforting  thought  in  connection  with  these  two  atti- 
tudes is  that  the  first  may  beget  the  second — faithful  contin- 
uance in  well-doing  may  lead  up  into  the  higher  regions  of 
action.  One  may  come  to  find  that  he  has  in  him  the  nobler 
spirit  through  conquest  of  difficulty,  which  often  repeated 
may  beget  the  sense  of  power  which  welcomes  a  task  as  an 
opportunity.  The  path  which  was  entered  upon  as  a  struggle 
may  through  struggle  lead  to  a  height  where  with  still  greater 
difficulty  may  come  greater  strength  to  overcome. 

But  we  must  hasten  to  apply  our  principle  to  our  own  im- 
mediate conditions.  For  some  time  past,  say  roughly  half  a 
century,  education  has  been  developing  along  a  line  which  is 
directly  the  opposite  of  what  we  have  called  the  law  of  the 
universe,  the  law  which  gives  a  premium  to  the  overcoming  of 
difficulty.  The  tendency  has  been  to  make  the  processes  of 
education  more  and  more  easy,  and  to  do  this  not  only  as  an 
expedient  but  as  a  philosophy.  It  is  an  outcome  of  the  new 
pedagogics — call  it  the  legitimate  outcome,  or  the  perversion, 
as  we  must.  "Study  the  nature  and  the  special  characteris- 
tics of  the  individual  mind  and  work  in  accordance  therewith. 
Follow  the  lines  of  least  resistance.  In  the  kindergarten, 
blend  work  with  play  so  that  the  child  will  not  be  conscious  of 
any  effort.  Continue  this  method  upward.  Let  the  teacher 
go  in  advance  of  all  work  and  do  all  the  thinking  and  let  the 
pupil  acquiesce.  Let  him  have  keys  to  his  problems  and 
translations  for  his  languages.  Let  the  teacher  lecture  and 
the  pupil  take  notes.  Let  the  student  follow  the  bent  of  his 
m:nd  and  choose  the  studies  that  are  easy  to  him,  "soft  elec- 
tiv'es,"  in  college  phrase.  By  these  methods,  the  old  rough 
ways,  the  plebeian  roads  for  hobnailed  stogies,  even  the  well 
graded  zig-zags  for  tender  feet,  can  be  scorned  and  the  youth 
can  go  up  to  the  heights  of  learning  by  elevators  and  even 
balloons."  The  outcome  of  this  method  is  very  flattering, 


138  THE  VERY  ELECT 

and  very  deceptive,  until  one  gets  out  from  this  highly  arti- 
ficial condition  of  things  into  the  regions  where  the  laws  of 
the  universe  have  their  way,  and  then,  face  to  face  with  the 
realities  which  bristle  with  difficulties,  and  with  no  professor 
to  solve  them  for  him,  the  youth  finds  that  he  has  no  training 
and  no  experience  with  which  to  encounter  difficulties  for  him- 
self, and  he  either  drops  into  a  position  unworthy  of  him,  or 
begins  all  over  again  to  learn  the  real  secret  of  all  true  life — 
that  to  succeed  is  to  conquer  one's  own  difficulties. 

Let  us  not  seem  to  do  injustice  to  the  new  doctrine.  Part  of 
it  is  true  and  good.  The  laws  of  mind  and  the  methods  of 
nature,  the  inward  forces  of  personality,  are  surely  to  be  fol- 
lowed, provided  we  follow  them  all  duly  and  proportionately, 
and  do  not  select  some  one  tendency  or  principle  and  follow 
that  out  to  an  extreme  which  soon  becomes  extravagance. 
It  is  true  that  what  the  mind  does  easily,  it  does  happily— 
if  it  is  worth  doing.  But  it  is  also  true  that  what  the  mind 
does  with  effort,  with  an  effort  which  overcomes  and  acquires, 
it  does  still  more  happily,  and  what  it  does  with  most  difficulty, 
it  does  with  greatest  joy  and  greatest  benefit.  No  eurekas 
attend  the  accomplishment  of  an  easy  task.  It  is  no  great 
fun  for  a  college  team  to  beat  a  prep,  school.  There  is  no  great 
exhilaration  in  getting  to  the  top  of  Brigham  Hill,  superb  as 
the  view  is  from  there.  Graduates  do  not  look  back  with 
pride  on  having  got  a  pass  mark  in  a  soft  elective.  But  when, 
leaving  the  laggards  at  the  Half-way  House,  one  climbs  to  the 
top  of  Mansfield  on  the  Underbill  side;  when  the  youth,  in 
spite  of  dismaying  traditions  safely  crosses  the  Pons  Asin- 
orum',  when  without  help  he  solves  those  first  puzzling  prob- 
lems in  algebra  respecting  the  hare  and  the  tortoise,  the  hour 
and  the  minute  hands  of  the  clock,  and  the  first  troubles  over 
surds;  when  he  has  unlocked  the  syntax  of  that  tough  passage 
in  the  second  book  of  Thucydides;  when  he  divines  the  meaning 
of  that  deep  passage  in  the  Inferno  or  Faust ;  when  he  has  worked 
out  a  clear  path  to  luminous  results  in  some  maze  of  history,  or 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  139 

philosophy,  or  economics;  when  he  has  mastered  some  intri- 
cate and  far-reaching  principle  of  science;  then  he  has  the  great 
joy  of  feeling  that  he  has  done  something  by  himself.  Then 
he  feels  strong  for  future  tasks  and  eager  for  the  next  difficulty 
to  be  overcome. 

Let  us  here  again  remind  ourselves  that  the  difficulty  which 
we  love  to  encounter  is  the  difficulty  which  is  inherent  in  the 
thing  itself  and  is  essential  to  it,  not  one  which  arises  from  a 
blundering  way  of  doing  it.  We  are  not  seeking  for  something 
that  is  good  because  it  is  hard  but  for  the  thing  that  is  hard  be- 
cause it  is  good.  The  effort  necessary  to  overcome  the  in- 
herent difficulty  of  a  supremely  good  thing — that  is  what  taxes 
and  rewards  and  energizes.  The  effort  called  upon,  to  neu- 
tralize unnecessary  obstacles  is  wasted  effort  and  has  nothing 
to  say  for  itself.  The  spelling  of  English  is  a  case  in  point.  To 
learn  English  spelling  uses  up  wastefully  an  immense  amount 
of  mental  effort — a  waste  tolerated  only  because  it  comes  at 
a  time  when  no  other  mental  exertion  is  called  for  loudly 
enough.  Such  also  is  the  waste  inflicted  by  bad  teaching — 
say  for  example  the  teaching  of  arithmetic,  in  which  there  is  a 
going  out  of  the  way  to  invent  ingenious  difficulties  which  no 
pupil  can  be  expected  to  love  or  ought  to  love.  The  worst 
of  all  teaching — except  that  which  is  so  dull  that  it  dulls  every 
subject  it  touches — is  the  teaching  that  first  creates  these 
unnecessary  difficulties  and  then  courts  approbation  by  the 
ingenuity  with  which  it  graciously  explains  them,  and  thus 
robs  pupils  of  any  possible  advantages  there  might  have  been 
in  finding  one's  way  through  them. 

Now  if  we  agree  that  this  is  the  right  view  of  the  processes 
of  education,  two  or  three  practical  results  will  follow  and  they 
will  close  this  discourse.  First,  it  gives  the  pupil  a  right  judg- 
ment of  the  teaching  he  receives.  The  most  common  excuse 
given  by  pupils  and  by  parents  when  failures  have  to  be  ac- 
counted for  is  that  the  teacher  does  not  " explain  things"  as 
he  might.  This  may  be  a  just  criticism,  meaning  that  the 


140  THE  VERY  ELECT 

teacher's  own  statements  are  obscure,  or  involved,  or  not 
logically  coherent  and  lucid.  It  usually  means  that  the  pupil 
has  been  allowed  to  get  into  the  habit  of  expecting  all  difficulties 
to  be  solved  for  him  by  a  too  good-natured  and  therefore 
incompetent  teacher,  and  that  now  he  cannot  master  the 
difficulties  which  a  good  teacher  requires  of  him  to  master  for 
himself.  The  competent  man,  either  in  the  class  or  in  the 
business  of  life,  is  one  who  can  " explain  things"  for  himself 
when  there  is  no  teacher  to  explain  them  for  him,  and  the  busi- 
ness of  education  is  to  inure  him  to  the  task  of  explaining 
things — that  is,  of  thinking  his  way  through  difficulties. 

The  next  point  is  that  in  the  choice  of  electives,  whether 
elective  departments  or  elective  courses,  a  student  should  choose 
those  which  give  him  the  discipline  he  most  needs,  not  the 
kind  of  study  he  most  likes.  Here  we  must  walk  rather  care- 
fully. Shall  the  student  ignore  the  bent  of  his  mind?  Shall 
he  force  himself  to  pursue  studies  which  are  repulsive  to  him 
on  the  grounds  that  they  are  especially  desirable  for  his  dis- 
cipline? To  a  certain  extent  yes;  beyond  that,  no.  Take  the 
question  of  mathematics  which  is  the  most  common  one. 
The  normal  human  mind  is  capable  of  mathematical  reasoning 
for  the  simple  reason,  as  was  so  beautifully  shown  to  us  by 
Professor  Keyser,  that  mathematical  logic  is  necessary  human 
thinking.  And  for  that  reason  all  fundamental  education 
includes  a  certain  amount  of  mathematics.  No  educator 
would  ever  think  of  leaving  it  out.  If  an  individual  student 
finds  the  process  somewhat  harder  than  does  the  next  boy  or 
girl,  that  is  no  more  than  the  greater  or  less  difficulty  which 
varying  minds  must  expect  to  encounter,  and  the  greater 
difficulty  is  only  an  indication  of  the  special  need  of  that  mind, 
and  a  challenge  to  the  benefit  of  the  extra  exertion.  The 
ordinary  student  should  no  more  be  willing  to  accept  a  judg- 
ment of  incompetence  in  mathematics  than  he  would  of  any 
other  kind  of  mental  inferiority.  A  long  observation  con- 
vinces me  that  inability  to  do  the  required  mathematical  work 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  141 

of  a  college  course  is  more  a  moral  than  a  mental  delinquency, 
a  defect  of  will,  of  steadfast  continuous  will,  that  drops  no 
stitches,  that  wills  to  do  homely  work  in  patient  hours,  rather 
than  a  deficiency  of  intelligence.  When  the  question  comes 
up  respecting  advanced  mathematics,  who  should  aspire  to  be 
senior  wrangler  and  all  that,  this  is  a  question  of  genius — 
for  there  is  a  genius  for  mathematics  as  there  is  a  genius  for 
music  or  poetry  or  invention. 

What  we  have  gained  thus  far  is  in  substance  this;  first, 
provided  the  difficulty  is  not  fictitious  but  real,  the  overcoming 
of  difficulty  is  one  of  the  main  agencies  of  education,  and  the 
business  of  the  teacher  is  to  present  difficulties  in  the  right 
order,  gradation,  and  magnitude,  and  to  encourage  and  stim- 
ulate and  guide  the  pupil  in  his  task  of  overcoming  them: 
secondly,  it  is  the  business  of  the  pupil  to  face  these  difficulties 
honestly,  bravely,  resolutely  and  to  value  and  enjoy  his  work  in 
proportion  as  it  is  a  real  conquest  of  difficulties  past  and  a 
happy  anticipation  of  more  worlds  to  conquer. 

What  surprises  me  more  than  anything  else  in  college 
students  is  the  lack  of  that  wholesome  pride,  that  commendable 
self-respect,  which  is  becoming  to  every  fairly  endowed  youth 
but  of  which  some  seem  devoid,  with  regard  to  their  college 
standing.  Does  it  ever  come  home  to  these  students  as  it 
should,  that  one's  record  disguised  under  other  names,  really 
means:  "feeble  of  will;  beaten  by  small  obstacles;  dropped 
down  or  out  for  lack  of  pluck;  recreant  to  one's  trust;  sleeping 
at  one's  post;  a  position  among  one's  fellows  not  to  be  proud 
of?  "  That  one  should  do  one's  best  and  not  attain  the  highest 
position  in  a  company  in  which  many  are  capable  and  some  are 
brilliant — that  is  pardonable;  but  to  fail  and  not  to  feel  cha- 
grined at  being  beaten  in  the  fair  contest  with  the  necessary  and 
wholesome  difficulties  of  an  ordinary  college  course,  is  a  con- 
dition to  be  wondered  at,  to  use  no  stronger  term. 

But  the  love  of  difficulty  concerns  more  than  school  and 
college.  It  touches  life  hi  every  department  and  phase  and 


142  THE  VERY  ELECT 

process  of  it.  Life  itself  is  an  art  beset  with  difficulties.  It 
is  no  easy  dolce  far  niente  business.  Hedonism  has  no 
place  in  it.  Our  Supreme  Deity  is  not  a  God  of  Epicurus  but 
the  Father  who  "worketh  hitherto."  It  is  for  that  reason 
the  more  interesting.  Who  would  want  to  be  transported 
to  a  planet  in  which  there  were  no  mountains  to  climb,  no  poles 
to  discover,  no  stormy  seas  to  cross — a  planet  in  which  it 
would  always  seem  afternoon?  I  am  ready  to  go  farther  and 
so  far  endorse  a  questionable  theology  as  to  say,  "in  which 
there  are  no  dragons  to  slay,  no  devils  to  fight,  no  wrong, 
no  evil  to  contend  with."  If  this  is  not  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  it  is  a  better  world  than  one  would  be  in  which  every- 
thing was  fixed  right  to  begin  with;  in  which  there  was  no  pain, 
no  struggle,  no  tragedy;  in  which  all  the  boys  were  cherubs 
and  all  the  girls  blessed  damozels.  At  any  rate  our  world  is 
one  that  does  not  leave  us  soft  for  want  of  the  difficulties  which 
develop  robust  characters.  Let  no  one  seek  comfort  in  his 
indolence  from  the  saying  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Cynic  that  "the 
race  is  not  to  the  swift  nor  the  battle  to  the  strong,"  nor  from 
the  popular  version  which  qualifies  it  by  an  "always."  Don't 
chance  it  on  the  hope  that  you  may  come  in  under  this  "al- 
ways"— that  you  may  be  the  exceptional  slower  runner  who 
sometimes  wins  the  race,  the  suitor  who,  helped  by  the  golden 
apple,  outran  Atalanta,  the  Marathon  runner  who  won  because 
of  the  faint  of  his  rival,  the  beneficiary  of  some  special  inter- 
position of  Providence.  Be  assured — and  act  upon  the  assur- 
ance— that  in  a  world  providentially  committed  to  the  process 
of  evolution  the  race  must  be  to  the  swift  and  the  battle  to 
the  strong.  No  world  would  be  fit  to  live  in  if  the  prizes  in 
the  race  were  to  go  to  the  slow  and  the  victory  in  the  battle 
to  the  weak.  At  any  rate  this  is  not  our  world  and  those  are 
wise  who  govern  themselves  accordingly. 

There  is  no  better  time  or  place  for  wrestling  with  some  of 
the  main  difficulties  of  life  than  here  and  now  in  college,  only 
let  it  be  done  here  and  now  as  always  and  everywhere,  in  the 


THE  LOVE  OF  DIFFICULTY  143 

spirit  of  love  and  not  hate  of  life's  difficulties.  Well  it  is  for 
any  of  us  if  we  can  say  with  bravery,  not  with  bravado,  "I 
am  glad  that  life  to  me  has  its  difficulties  for  that  means 
that  it  is  worth  while.  It  is  worth  while  to  get  a  V  on  the 
breast  of  my  sweater;  to  get  a  good  list  of  A's  in  my  class  work, 
especially  in  the  courses  which  to  me  are  especially  stiff; 
to  fight  the  temptations  which  beset  every  college  student 
and  those  which  beset  me  in  particular;  to  win  a  position  of 
leadership  among  my  college  mates  in  all  good  things  popular 
and  unpopular,  especially  the  latter;  and  above  all  to  live  so 
that  I  can  look  my  God  in  the  face  at  all  times  and  everywhere, 
and  be  sure  of  his  approval  and  of  his  help  when  the  difficulty 
which  I  cannot  overcome  and  will  not  evade  is  too  hard  for 
my  own  strength." 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS   IN   EVERY-DAY 

LIFE 

THE  OPENING  ADDRESS:  SEPTEMBER,  1909 

IT  is  not  easy,  and  it  is  no  part  of  my  purpose,  to  make  a 
sharp  distinction  between  an  educated  and  an  uneducated 
person.  The  line  is  too  broad  and  flexible  to  make  such  a 
distinction  practicable.  General  public  estimation  discrimi- 
nates in  a  way  between  a  well-educated  man  and  one  who 
does  not  in  its  judgment  merit  this  description,  but  it  is  a  judg- 
ment which  does  not  well  distinguish  between  the  essentials  of 
a  good  education  and  what  we  may  call  its  accomplishments. 
My  main  purpose  at  this  time  is  to  insist  upon  the  great 
value  of  certain  abilities  and  attainments  which  all  educated 
persons  would  be  advantaged  in  having,  but  which  many  do 
not  have,  to  their  great  disadvantage  and  loss. 

Let  us  for  the  sake  of  clearness  try  to  state,  in  a  general 
way,  what  it  is  which  distinguishes  the  well-educated  from  the 
uneducated  or  half-educated  person.  Is  it  not  the  having 
acquired  familiarity  with,  and  training  in,  the  working  of  the 
normal  human  mind  in  its  reasoning,  its  imagining,  its  willing; 
in  having  learned  certain  universal  and  unimpeachable  canons 
of  judgment  and  taste;  and  in  having  become  somewhat 
proficient  in  the  art  of  expression?  From  a  practical  point  of 
view,  is  not  an  educated  man  one  who  has  been  so  trained 
that  when  he  settles  into  the  serious  business  of  life,  he  can 
think  clearly,  can  reason  his  way  through  the  successive 
situations  that  confront  him,  and  meet  his  life  work  with  some 
well-founded  confidence  in  his  own  power  of  initiative  and 
decision?  When  we  say  of  certain  men  that  they  have  had  a 
liberal  education,  we  often  mean  no  more  than  that  they  have 

144 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  145 

had  the  opportunity  for  such  an  education.  Whether  this 
one  or  that  one  has  improved  his  opportunity  and  is  really  a 
well  and  highly  educated  man,  is  another  question.  A  man 
is  not  well  educated,  whatever  educational  routine  he  may 
have  gone  through,  who  has  not  so  profited  by  his  acquaintance 
with  the  best  models  of  thought  and  utterance  as  to  be  saved 
from  false  reasoning  himself  and  from  being  misled  by  the 
false  reasoning  of  others;  who  has  no  resources  for  meeting 
new  problems  and  new  opportunities;  who  goes  wrong  on  some 
of  the  great  practical  issues  of  life  where  men  who  have  only 
common  sense  to  guide  them  go  right.  A  liberal  education  is 
one  that  has  brought  within  the  reach  of  the  educable  man,  and 
made  available  to  him  for  the  conduct  of  his  own  life,  some 
good  portion  of  the  elementary  wisdom  which  the  race  has 
accumulated  up  to  his  date,  especially  the  wisdom  which  teaches 
one  how  to  make  the  best  of  his  particular  endowments  and 
opportunities.  I  say  the  elementary  wisdom,  meaning  thereby 
the  fundamental,  rudimentary  principles  of  knowledge  and 
action,  which  are  essential  to  right  attainment  and  which  if 
mastered  almost  guarantee  it.  The  modern  fad  of  certain 
educationists  that  every  new  individual  must  go  through  all 
the  educating  experiences  which  the  race  has  gone  through, 
must  learn,  as  the  race  has  learned,  by  repeating  the  ever  old 
and  ever  new  mistakes  and  follies  of  mankind,  disdains  all  the 
lessons  of  history  and  forfeits  all  the  promises  of  evolution. 
What  a  true  education  does  for  an  open-minded  and  docile 
youth,  is  to  teach  him  the  methods  by  which  men  have  attained 
truth,  and  avoided  error,  and  improved  life,  and  passed  on  a 
higher  humanity  to  the  succeeding  age.  To  be  still  more 
explicit,  to  be  liberally  educated  is  to  have  drawn  from  a  wide 
acquaintance  with  the  best  human  thought  a  good  stock  of 
sound  opinions  available  for  the  critical  decisions  of  life;  to 
have  formed  habits  of  clear  and  resolute  thinking;  to  have 
learned  by  submission  and  discipline  in  the  necessary  laws  of 
thought  to  gain  freedom  and  power  for  one's  own  thought;  to 
10 


146  THE  VERY  ELECT 

have  attained  order,  and  consecutiveness,  and  subordination, 
and  proportion,  in  ideas  and  judgments  and  actions  and 
measures;  to  be  persuaded  only  after  conviction;  to  hesitate 
and  deliberate,  and  look  at  the  matter  all  around,  and  then, 
and  not  till  then,  to  decide,  and  will  and  do ;  to  do  and  to  be  all 
this,  of  course,  gradually,  progressively,  as  the  years  go  by, 
and  as  necessities  and  opportunities  require.  In  this  enumera- 
tion of  mental  virtues  I  have  not  meant  to  imply  that  a  good 
education  guarantees  all  intellectual  powers  and  charms,  but 
only  to  point  out  what  a  complete  education  aims  at  and  what 
it  does  actually  accomplish  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  for  those 
who  are  its  best  exemplars.  The  world's  judgment  is  not 
wrong  when  it  highly  approves  of  certain  characteristics  and 
qualities  as  attributes  of  those  whom  in  a  large  and  liberal 
spirit  it  admires  as  "well  educated  men." 

But  there  are  certain  attainments  and  abilities  which  are 
of  next  to  the  highest  importance,  which  ought  always  to 
accompany  a  good  education,  and  which  so  naturally  grow 
out  of  it  that  their  absence  discredits  whatever  other  education 
one  may  have  had.  The  first  I  will  mention  is  a  Good  Manner 
of  Speech.  By  this  I  mean  first  of  all  and  of  course  correct 
speech,  and  next  what  needs  to  be  added  to  make  speech 
pleasing  and  effective.  I  might — though  I  shall  not — spend 
profitably  a  good  deal  of  time  in  insisting  on  the  importance 
of  attaining  the  habit  of  speech  which  is  simply  correct,  of 
clear  articulation,  right  pronunciation,  canonical  syntax.  I 
shall  on  this  point  make  only  one  appeal — and  that  you  may 
not  regard  as  the  highest — that  speech  more  than  almost 
anything  else  marks  a  social  distinction.  It  reveals,  as  the 
servant  maid  said  of  the  apostle  Peter,  it  "bewrayeth"  the 
speaker.  It  marks  where  one  belongs  not  only  racially,  but 
geographically,  often  parochially,  sometimes  ecclesiastically, 
always  socially.  It  declares  whether  or  not  one's  ancestors, 
especially  one's  immediate  family,  were  of  the  educated  class, 
and  whether  one's  associates  are  now  of  that  class.  There 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  147 

is  in  this  country  no  such  infallible  social  register  as  in 
England  goes  with  the  use  and  abuse  of  the  one  aspirate,  but 
there  are  distinctions  of  tone  and  phrase,  there  are  corruptions 
and  solecisms,  there  are  pitfalls  of  pronunciation  and  syntax, 
which  lie  in  wait  for  the  unwary  and  often  expose  him  to  blame 
for  which  his  forbears  and  neighbors  and  his  early  teachers 
are  partly  answerable,  but  for  which  he  has  to  suffer  morti- 
fication and  reproach.  And  there  is  another  condition  almost 
equally  deplorable,  that  is,  such  a  consciousness  of  liability 
to  self -betrayal  as  to  beget  a  painful  habit  of  hesitation  and 
self-criticism  fatal  to  all  spontaneity  and  flow  of  speech.  This 
is  the  explanation — though  hardly  the  excuse — for  that  slow, 
labored,  staccato  style  of  speech  noticeable  in  many  scholarly 
men,  and  said  to  be  fostered  rather  than  corrected  by  linguistic 
studies,  which  is  more  taxing  to  the  ears  and  trying  to  the 
nerves  of  hearers  than  any  number  of  downright,  if  they  only 
be  transient  and  fluent  blunders.  But  beyond  mere  correct, 
errorless  speech,  is  the  speech  which  is  a  real  accomplishment, 
speech  which  is  at  once  spontaneous,  simple,  easy  and  yet 
effective,  graceful,  pleasing  to  the  ear,  persuasive  to  the  mind 
and  heart.  I  suppose  this  kind  of  speech,  within  the  bounds 
of  conversation,  has  reached  its  greatest  perfection  in  highly 
cultivated  women,  in  the  coteries,  the  salons,  the  conversazioni, 
in  which  such  highly  cultivated  women  have  set  the  key  and 
furnished  the  model  of  a  style  of  speech  at  once  brilliant  and 
colloquial.  Even  when  we  come  to  the  higher  forms  of  oral 
language,  to  public  addresses,  to  oratory  proper,  we  reach  a 
stage  beyond  declamatory  and  turgid  eloquence,  or  pseudo- 
eloquence,  where  we  find  the  same  qualities  in  the  ascendant — 
the  spontaneous,  the  simple,  the  graceful,  the  strong.  To  sum 
up  a  small  part  of  what  one  would  like  to  say  on  the  speech  of 
an  educated  man  or  woman,  let  us  advise  these  young  persons 
while  they  are  forming  habits  of  speech  to  cultivate  a  mode  of 
address  which  shall  be  correct  in  accordance  with  established 
usage,  sufficiently  fluent  to  avoid  taxing  the  patience  of 


148  THE  VERY  ELECT 

hearers,  simple,  free  from  affectation,  not  bookish  but  free 
from  slang  (except  under  great  provocation),  strong  in  nouns 
and  verbs,  sparing  in  adjectives  and  explosives.  For  the 
educated  man  has  a  larger  vocabulary  to  draw  upon  than  the 
half -educated  man;  this  should  save  him  from  two  temptations 
which  beset  other  men — to  profanity,  and  to  slang — both  of 
which  are  largely  traceable  to  a  paucity  of  words  with  which 
to  express  ideas  and  emotions. 

Next  among  scholarly  accomplishments  I  shall  commend  the 
Ability  to  Write  Well.  I  include  and  even  emphasize  good 
handwriting,  which  in  spite  of  all  typewriting  and  other 
mechanical  devices,  will  never  cease  to  be  a  real  accomplish- 
ment. I  know  that  some  highly  educated  men  make  shameless 
and  even  boastful  confession  of  bad  penmanship,  just  as  some 
great  mathematicians  pretend  to  have  forgotten  the  multipli- 
cation table.  It  is  one  of  the  small  vanities  of  great  men  to 
disdain  those  arts  in  which  ordinary  men  may  excel.  None 
the  less  it  is  a  bit  of  conceit  that  we  may  pardon  but  ought 
not  to  be  called  upon  to  admire.  It  is  the  same  kind  of  affront 
to  conventional  decorum  which  we  see  in  shabby  dressing  by 
some  rich  men.  Good  writing  is  one  of  the  smaller  fine  arts 
of  life.  As  we  all  have  to  do  with  it,  it  is  worth  while  to  do  it 
well.  To  do  it  awkwardly,  in  a  slovenly  fashion,  is  to  be  lack- 
ing in  the  fine  sense  of  what  is  becoming  to  one's  self  and  to 
consideration  of  others.  And  what  may  be  thought  more  to 
the  point,  it  is  a  distinct  lowering  of  one's  valuation  in  the 
estimate  of  the  great  social  employer  and  paymaster  of  us  all — 
the  public  judgment  of  us.  Now  I  must  not  spoil  the  effect 
of  what  I  am  saying  by  saying  too  much — but  oh!  oh!  what 
a  tale  the  blue  books  tell  of  the  need  of  my  saying  as  much  as 
I  have  said!  I  will  only  add  that  the  ideal  of  pen-writing  is 
the  good  old  copperplate  style  learned  at  school,  individualized 
by  much  rapid  use,  and  become  whatever  personal  taste,  or 
fancy,  or  even  caprice  may  ordain,  provided  that  it  be  never 
characterless,  never  weak,  never  mean. 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  149 

But  the  accomplishment  of  good  writing  is  much  more  than 
putting  one's  self  well  to  the  eye  on  paper;  it  includes  the  whole 
art  and  process  of  written  expression,  from  the  simple  note  by 
which  one  acknowledges  a  letter  or  accepts  an  invitation,  to 
an  elaborate  paper  in  which  one  sets  forth  his  views  on  some 
subject,  economic,  scientific,  literary,  social,  political.  A 
writer  of  the  last  century  made  a  reputation  which  lasted  a  good 
while  by  an  essay  on  "  The  Art  of  Putting  Things  "  in  which  the 
art  itself  was  well  put.  It  is  an  apt  phrase  to  describe  the  kind 
of  writing,  both  less  and  more  than  rhetoric,  by  which  thought 
is  made  effective  and  prevailing  in  the  every-day  life  of  this 
work-a-day  world.  It  is  an  art  not  acquired  without  labor. 
Indeed  when  it  seems  to  be  most  unstudied  and  natural,  it  has 
probably  cost  most  labor  to  attain.  If  I  wanted  to  find  models 
of  it  to  commend  to  your  imitation,  I  should  not  look  among 
the  gorgeous  periods  of  Cicero  and  Burke,  but  in  the  military 
despatches  of  Caesar  and  Wellington  and  Grant,  in  the 
judicial  opinions  of  the  great  judges,  in  the  scientific  papers  of 
Huxley  and  Tyndall,  in  the  reports  of  great  engineers,  in  the 
leading  articles  of  the  London  Times,  the  Spectator,  and  the 
first  class  dailies  of  New  York  and  Chicago.  In  the  writing 
of  even  the  last  century  there  is  too  much  leisure,  too  much 
waste  of  good  English,  too  much  beating  about  and  what  in 
another  field  is  called  " hovering."  The  accomplishment  of 
which  we  are  now  speaking  is  not  the  making  of  literature: 
it  is  simply  the  saying  in  the  most  effective  way  something 
which  in  itself  is  worth  saying.  To  do  this  well  is  to  be  lucid, 
to  be  rapid,  to  be  brief,  to  be  strong,  to  be  graceful. 

There  is  one  kind  of  writing  on  which  a  word  of  special 
comment  is  due — that  is  letter-writing.  To  write  a  good  letter, 
whether  on  matters  of  business  or  friendship  or  in  the  inter- 
change of  social  or  literary  amenities,  is,  next  to  conversation, 
the  finest  of  all  scholarly  accomplishments.  It  is  almost  a 
special  art  by  itself.  It  has  its  own  forms  of  stationery,  its 
own  strict  etiquette,  its  own  linguistic  style.  By  nothing  else 


150  THE  VERY  ELECT 

is  a  well-bred  gentleman  or  gentlewoman  more  infallibly 
known.  I  receive  some  thousands  of  letters  in  the  course  of 
a  year  from  a  great  variety  of  persons,  very  many  from  can- 
didates for  positions  in  the  University,  or  for  recommenda- 
tions to  positions  elsewhere.  Some  of  them  are  written  on 
cheap,  ruled  paper,  some  in  blue  or  purple  ink,  many  have 
unconventional  and  strange  forms  of  address,  a  large  per- 
centage of  them  have  words  misspelled,  some  are  illegible. 
All  such  letters  discredit  the  writers  and  lumber  the  waste- 
basket.  It  is  by  no  means  an  infrequent  experience  to  receive 
a  letter  of  several  pages  covered  with  titles  of  the  writer's 
learned  publications  but  sadly  discounted  by  lapses  from 
orthographic  and  epistolary  good  form.  A  letter  on  good, 
plain,  white,  unlined  paper,  with  date,  address,  spacing,  line- 
ending,  folding,  signature,  sealing,  superscribing,  all  comme  il 
faut — for  all  these  are  points  of  rigor  among  cultivated  per- 
sons,— is  itself  a  good  introduction,  whereas  to  omit  or  commit 
wrongly  on  any  of  these  points  is  to  forfeit  a  kind  of  initial 
good-will  which  it  were  well  worth  while  to  gain.  And  the 
epistolary  style  is  something  to  be  well  considered.  With  un- 
limited flexibility  it  adapts  itself  to  the  subject  and  the  occasion 
— is  now  concise  and  formal,  in  letters  of  business  and  ceremony ; 
now  discursive,  frolicsome,  passing  with  light  touch  from  one 
topic  to  another  in  friendly  correspondence;  always  scrupu- 
lously correct  even  when  gayest,  yet  as  unconscious  of  gram- 
matical restriction  as  the  summer  swallow  is  of  the  laws  of 
aviation.  In  letter-writing  as  nowhere  else  language  obeys  the 
slightest  and  the  swiftest  turns  of  thought  and  feeling.  Covet, 
and  by  all  means  cultivate,  the  grace  of  good  letter-writing. 
To  its  ingratiating  charm  many  a  one  owes  a  good  entree,  that 
is,  a  chance  to  show  what  further  good  there  is  in  one,  and  in 
the  end  a  good  position,  a  good  circle  of  friends,  even  a  good 
husband,  a  good  wife. 

An  accomplishment  which  is  not  in  such  constant  service 
as  those  already  referred  to  but  one  which  is  highly  useful,  is 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  151 

the  ability  to  take  an  effective  part  in  public  meetings.  This 
might  be  to  preside  over  such  meetings,  to  serve  as  chairman, 
or  moderator,  or  toast-master.  To  do  this  successfully  one 
needs  to  know  a  few  simple  parliamentary  rules,  to  be  able  to 
keep  a  clear  head  amid  entanglements  of  motions,  and  to 
maintain  a  sympathetic  but  impartial  attitude  toward  all 
parties  and  interests  involved.  But  in  the  multiplicity  of 
opportunities  afforded  by  fraternity  and  organization-  and 
general  college  meetings,  students  seldom  fail  to  get  an 
adequate  training  in  this  function.  A  word  or  two  respecting 
after-dinner  speaking.  The  advice  usually  given  to  aspirants 
in  this  direction  is  to  cultivate  the  art  of  saying  something  that 
is  of  no  consequence  but  saying  it  smartly.  I  beg  leave  to 
improve  on  this  and  to  enjoin:  "  Endeavor  to  say  something  of 
real,  if  possible  of  very  great,  consequence,  but  say  it  lightly 
and  gracefully."  There  are  men  who  can  be  hired  for  after- 
dinner  performances — " raconteurs" — and  they  amuse  us — 
and  we  reward  them  with  hand-clapping  and  guffaws.  But 
they  are  not  the  speakers  we  care  most  to  hear  even  in  our 
semi-somnolent  post-prandial  mood.  We  prefer  those  who 
will  give  us  something  that  is  pleasant  to  hear  and  good  to 
remember,  good  enough  to  reproduce  at  our  own  domestic 
prandial  board.  I  could  not  better  illustrate  this  than  by 
recalling  the  speeches  made  at  the  Champlain  Banquet  in  our 
own  Gymnasium — than  which  I  have  never  heard  better. 
The  matter  of  every  speech  was  anything  but  trivial.  It  was 
solid,  of  interest  national,  international,  cosmopolitan.  But 
everything  was  touched  lightly,  gracefully,  often  jocularly, 
yet  never  with  sacrifice  of  dignity  or  good  taste.  My  advice 
to  a  young  man  who  aspires  to  excel  in  this  difficult  art — as  I 
know  it  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  practice  of  the  most 
accomplished  after-dinner  speakers — is:  always  prepare  your- 
self with  all  possible  care  for  your  anticipated  part;  you  are 
then  safe  against  total  failure — you  can  eat  and  digest  and  lis- 
ten in  quietness.  But  be  on  the  alert  to  catch  the  suggestions 


152  THE  VERY  ELECT 

which  may  come  to  you  at  the  time  and  from  preceding 
speakers;  and  in  nine  instances  out  of  ten  you  will  not  make 
the  speech  you  had  prepared  but  a  better  one  born  of  the 
inspiration  which  the  occasion  has  brought  to  you. 

But  I  must  not  close  this  necessarily  incomplete  list  of 
scholarly  accomplishments  without  including  one  or  two 
which  concern  themselves  with  the  more  distinctly  aesthetic 
side  of  life — for  every  educated  person  ought  to  acquire  some 
such  accomplishments,  and  for  two  reasons:  partly  on  his 
own  account,  that  he  may  do  justice  to  himself  in  this  impor- 
tant and  too  neglected  side  of  his  nature,  and  partly  as  a 
social  obligation.  Every  educated  person  ought  to  have  at 
least  one  social  accomplishment,  some  gift,  or  faculty,  or 
attainment  by  which  he  or  she  may  contribute  to  the  pleasure 
or  profit  of  the  social  group  to  which  they  belong.  Few 
things  are  more  mortifying  than  to  find  one's  self  ignored,  set 
aside,  counted  out  by  reason  of  having  nothing  to  add  to  the 
common  fund  of  social  enjoyment.  Scholarly  accomplish- 
ments partaking  of  this  nature,  those  in  which  highly  educated 
persons  have  special  advantages,  might  be,  music  of  a  high 
character,  vocal  or  instrumental;  dramatic  invention  or  skill; 
cleverness  with  pencil,  or  crayon,  or  brush;  the  ability  to  read 
well  with  spirit  and  force,  without  elocutionary  affectation — 
any  superiority  which  humanizes  the  man  or  woman  and  for 
the  time  sinks  the  lawyer,  the  parson,  the  teacher,  in  the  social 
charmer.  But  it  must  be  a  superiority,  that  is,  it  must  be 
something  to  which  the  person  who  makes  the  offering  has 
given  such  special  effort  as  to  make  him  or  her  really  an 
expert.  For  instance,  any  one  is  an  appreciated  contributor  to 
good  company  who  knows  more  than  any  one  else  about 
some  subject  which  happens  to  be  of  special  interest,  it  might 
be  birds,  or  precious  stones,  or  engravings,  or  heraldry,  or 
Volapiik,  or  aviation;  it  might  be  one  who  has  travelled  in 
unwonted  places,  or  one  who  has  seen  more  than  others  in 
wonted  places;  one  who  can  quote  a  required  passage,  or  explain 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  153 

an  allusion,  or  locate  a  reference.  The  one  thing  needful  is  to 
cherish  the  sense  of  obligation  to  one's  social  circle,  to  ask 
where  one's  attainments  and  capabilities  may  best  contribute 
to  the  general  benefit,  and  to  use  one's  gifts  and  powers 
accordingly.  The  worst  of  all  possible  uses  of  a  good  educa- 
tion is  to  devote  it  to  one's  little  sole  self.  The  revival  in  our 
time  of  the  old  Epicurean  doctrine  that  the  final  object  of  all 
education  is  self-realization,  is  unchristian,  and  unphilosophic, 
and  unhuman. 

Will  it  be  going  too  far  afield  if  I  say  here  a  word  on  Good 
Manners?  We  smile  at  the  excess  of  emphasis  implied  in  the 
fact  that  in  certain  European  circles  "education"  means 
training  in  manners — "He  has  had  no  education"  meaning, 
"he  is  ill-mannered."  Still,  so  long  as  manners  go  so  far 
towards  securing  or  marring  one's  success,  it  is  a  great  mistake 
to  give  the  matter  less  attention  than  it  really  merits.  Prob- 
ably William  of  Wykeham  meant  by  his  motto  at  Winchester 
College,  "Manners  maketh  man,"  more  than  we  do  by  the 
word  manners;  perhaps  he  was  thinking  of  the  Latin  equival- 
ent, mores,  which  means  both  manners  and  morals.  The  good 
manners  which  should  add  grace  to  a  liberal  education  are  a 
combination  of  ethical  and  aesthetic  virtues.  They  add  to 
rectitude  what  Horace  says  poetry  must  add  to  prose — beauty 
and  sweetness.  They  get  their  inspiration  from  good- will — a 
desire  to  please  exhibiting  itself  in  a  fine  sensibility  to  the 
rights  and  feelings  of  others.  When  this  is  present  and 
manifest  forms  are  of  secondary  importance.  But  though  of 
secondary  they  are  still  of  great  importance.  Right  feeling 
has  its  appropriate  expression  and  this  is  not  something  which 
the  individual  can  extemporize.  It  is,  like  other  fine  arts,  a 
study,  a  tradition,  an  institution,  with  its  established  canons, 
I  had  almost  said  its  ritual.  Better  is  a  kind  heart  with  a 
rough  manner  than  che  finest  manners  and  hatred  or  unkind- 
ness  therewith.  But  better  still  is  the  kind  heart  which  has 
learned  the  way  to  double  its  kindness  by  a  gracious  manner. 


154  THE  VERY  ELECT 

It  ought  to  be  comparatively  easy  for  an  educated  person  to 
take  on  the  graces  of  culcivated  society,  or,  borrowing  St. 
Paul's  formula,  to  add  to  his  faith  virtue,  and  knowledge,  and 
brotherly  kindness — and  to  crown  all  with  charity  and  courtesy. 
But  as  I  have  already  intimated,  the  finest  of  all  social 
accomplishments  is  the  gift  and  grace  of  Conversation — and 
with  a  word  or  two  on  that  I  will  close.  Among  all  the 
accomplishments  I  have  mentioned  this  seems  to  be  least 
dependent  on  what  we  call  education,  that  is  on  scholastic 
training,  for  among  those  who  in  a  very  high  degree  enjoy  its 
pleasures  and  display  its  merits  are  many  whose  education  has 
been  of  the  most  elementary  kind.  I  doubt  not  that  most  of 
us  have  known  persons  of  limited  education  and  of  humble 
life  whose  conversation  has  been  a  delight  to  us.  If  asked 
where  one  would  be  surest  to  find  conversation  which  would 
be  racy,  original,  jovial,  full-flavored  of  humanity,  one  should 
"hae  a  crack"  with  crofters  at  a  Scotch  ingle,  or  fall  in  with 
Italian  laborers  at  a  siesta,  or  gather  with  some  of  Bret 
Harte's  adventurers  in  a  mining-camp.  Proficiency  in  the 
talk  of  the  table,  the  fireside,  or  the  shade,  seems  to  be  the 
special  gift  of  certain  individuals  and  to  some  extent  of  certain 
races.  You  are  more  likely  to  find  it  in  a  Frenchman  than  in  a 
Dutchman,  in  an  Irishman  than  an  Englishman,  in  one  born 
South  than  North  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  When  George 
Meredith  wanted  a  personage  who  was  to  be  his  exemplar  of 
brilliancy  in  conversation,  he  chose  an  Irish  girl,  and  to  her 
he  gave  the  subtlety  of  perception,  the  flash  of  suggestion,  the 
keenness  of  wit,  the  aptness  of  repartee,  which  make  up  the 
most  brilliant  conversationist  in  modern  fiction.  And  yet  if 
we  can  credit  the  biographies  of  men  famous  in  letters,  science 
and  art,  here  is  where  we  must  look  for  a  certain  perfection  of 
conversation  nowhere  else  reached.  Here  we  find  the  "noctes 
ambrosianae,"  and  the  "dies  boreales."  I  imagine  that  an 
hour  in  company  with  such  talkers  as  Walter  Scott,  Byron, 
Tom  Moore,  Charles  Lamb,  Sydney  Smith,  Coleridge;  as 
Holmes,  Lowell,  Margaret  Fuller;  as  the  editors  of  the  London 


SCHOLARLY  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  155 

Punch  at  their  weekly  dinner;  as  the  contributors  to  the 
Atlantic  at  their  annual  banquet;  would  disclose  what  conver- 
sation can  be  when  ifc  reaches  its  bright  consummate  flower. 
Where  else  should  we  look  than  to  the  highly  and  broadly 
educated  men  and  women  for  the  resources,  the  versatility, 
the  fine  sense  of  quality  in  thought  and  feeling,  the  verbal 
finesse,  which  go  to  the  making  of  perfect  conversation, — 
frank,  sincere,  vivacious,  swift  in  movement,  gentle  in  touch, 
keen  but  kindly,  a  profusion  of  intellect,  an  overflow  of  soul. 

If  conversation  could  be  taught  it  should  be  one  of  the 
required  subjects  for  all  students.  But  it  cannot  be  taught. 
And  yet  it  is  both  a  result  and  a  test  of  what  is  taught.  It 
is  one  of  the  things  which  you  come  to  college  to  learn.  The 
conversation  of  college  rooms  is  one  of  the  means  of  culture  for 
which  the  college  exists.  Its  topics,  its  language,  its  applauses, 
its  disapprovals,  its  silences,  and  most  of  all,  its  intellectual  and 
moral  tone  and  atmosphere,  are  highly  significant  indices  of 
character  and  attainment  and  are  among  the  most  potent 
forces  for  good  or  for  evil  which  University  life  offers  to  stu- 
dents. If  we  who  feel  ourselves  to  be  in  a  measure  responsible 
for  your  well-being  could  have  the  gift  attributed  to  Asmodeus 
of  seeing,  ourselves  unseen,  and  hearing,  what  goes  on  in 
college  rooms,  the  things  that  would  most  interest  us  would  be 
the  themes  of  your  most  earnest  conversation,  the  relative 
emphasis  you  put  upon  this  and  that  interest  of  a  true  young 
life,  the  matters  you  talk  about  freely  and  volubly,  and  those 
you  hold  sacred  and  do  not  talk  about  at  all.  We  should 
learn  much,  not  only  about  you,  but  about  ourselves,  our 
successes  and  failures  in  our  work  for  you  and  in  you.  It  would 
be  a  better  test  than  all  our  examinations — not  so  much  per- 
haps of  the  scholastic  side  of  your  work  and  ours,  but  of  those 
by-products  of  a  liberal  education,  those  almost  indispensable 
qualifications  for  a  life  of  intellect  and  culture  which  for  lack 
of  a  better  word  I  have  called  accomplishments,  and  by 
which  the  world  will  judge  you  to  be  or  not  to  be  worthy  of 
the  name  of  educated  men  and  women. 


THE    CLASSICS    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY 

REMARKS  AT  THE   BANQUET   OF  THE  ALUMNI  ASSOCIATION 
OF  NEW  YORK  CITY,  FEBRUARY  18,   1910 

COLLEGE  problems  are  in  the  air.  We  have  had  more  public 
discussion  of  such  problems  within  a  few  months  past  than  in  a 
whole  generation  heretofore.  These  problems  are  of  two 
kinds — those  concerning  educational  values  in  general,  and 
those  pertaining  to  individual  institutions.  As  regards  the 
first,  while  the  forms  of  opinion  are  various,  there  has  been  one 
general  trend,  a  trend  toward  liberal  culture.  After  the  ex- 
perience of  a  generation  in  the  other  direction,  toward  practical 
results  more  or  less  narrowly  estimated,  there  is  a  manifest 
dissatisfaction  with  the  general  outcome.  The  public,  even 
the  uneducated  or  half-educated  portion  of  the  public,  misses 
something  which  is  expected  of  fine  scholarship.  They  do  not 
fail  to  notice  that  the  few  men  who  speak  to  them  with  the 
ring  which  touches  their  imagination,  are  not  products  of  the 
new  regime.  Not  that  modern  changes  have  been  wholly 
mistaken:  many  of  them  were  inevitable:  some  of  them  will  be 
permanent:  but  it  is  time  for  a  recall  to  ideals  temporarily 
overborne.  We  read  much  of  "passings"  and  " renascences." 
We  rarely  take  up  a  magazine  without  seeing  headlines  about 
the  passing  of  something  or  the  renascence  of  something.  In 
the  educational  world  it  is  the  renascence  of  liberal  culture 
and  the  passing  of  narrow  specialism.  A  generation  ago  cul- 
ture was  thrust  out  of  the  windows  with  jeers:  today  it  is 
invited  in  at  the  front  door  with  cheers  and  garlands.  What 
is  the  culture  we  thrust  out  and  now  want  to  get  in  again? 
It  is  the  education  of  the  man  for  the  sake  of  manhood  and 
character  and  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  what  he  can  be  made 
to  turn  out  in  material  products.  I  should  not  wonder  if  as 

156 


CLASSICS  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  157 

a  part  of  this  general  renascence  of  liberal  culture  there  should 
be  a  renascence  of  that  discipline  which  used  to  furnish  so  fine 
an  example  of  it,  the  classical  discipline.  I  should  not  wonder 
if  Greek,  and  what  Greek  stands  for,  should  have  a  revival  in 
our  higher  institutions.  There  are  a  few  institutions,  of 
which  the  University  of  Vermont  is  one,  which  still  require 
Greek,  and  what  Greek  stands  for,  in  order  to  the  A.  B.  de- 
gree. If  I  may  venture  on  a  prophecy,  he  who  speaks  to  you 
in  my  place  ten  years  hence,  will  be  able  tc  congratulate  you 
on  the  additional  number  of  institutions  requiring  Greek  for 
the  A.  B.  degree.  Not  that  I  would  have  all  students  study 
Greek,  but  that  I  would  have  Greek  taught  in  all  higher 
institutions,  and  I  would  have  no  institution  empowered  to 
grant  the  A.  B.  degree  in  which  Greek  is  not  taught.  I 
would  have  that  which  Greek  stands  for  and  of  which  it  is  in 
all  history  the  finest  embodiment  and  expression,  diffused 
through  the  atmosphere  and  the  life  of  every  institution, 
reaching  into  the  brain  and  heart  of  every  student  in  every 
department,  banishing  what  is  coarse  and  mean  and  sensual, 
and  bringing  in  sweetness  and  light  and  all  the  fine  things  of 
the  spirit.  What  a  right  public  judgment  misses,  what  a 
growing  thoughtful  judgment  is  demanding,  is  more  high  and 
fine  thinking,  more  imagination,  more  humanity,  more  spirit- 
uality, in  fine,  more  culture  in  the  teaching  and  the  life  of  our 
institutions  of  learning. 

And  next  as  regards  the  problems  peculiar  to  each  insti- 
tution. I  hold  that  every  American  University,  or  College, 
should  have  a  certain  amount  of  individuality — a  vocation,  a 
reason  for  being,  which  it  is  to  maintain  and  magnify.  A 
movement  is  now  going  on,  pushed  mainly  by  the  universities 
of  the  West,  to  " standardize"  all  American  universities, 
virtually  to  prescribe  by  feet  and  inches  the  dimensions  on  all 
sides  which  all  ideal  institutions  should  have,  and  to  lop  off 
or  stretch  out  every  institution  until  it  conforms  to  this  stand- 
ard. Of  all  the  shapes  which  socialistic  uniformity  has  taken 


158  THE  VERY  ELECT 

on  in  our  time,  this  seems  to  me  to  be  the  dreariest  and  most 
deadly.  I  for  one  would  rather  be  suckled  in  any  out-worn 
educational  creed  than  in  this  newest  one.  When  I  was  one 
day  down  in  the  dumps  in  view  of  a  questionnaire  bringing 
our  university  into  this  scheme,  I  lighted  on  a  sentence  of 
Lord  Rosebery's  which  brought  uplift  and  exhilaration:  "True 
originality,"  he  says,  "can  scarcely  exist  but  in  the  back- 
waters of  life.  The  great  ocean  of  life  smoothes  and  rolls 
its  pebbles  to  too  much  the  same  shape  and  texture."  Thanks, 
I  said  to  myself,  thanks  for  Lake  Champlain,  and  the 
Winooski,  and  the  backwaters  or  fresh  waters  of  life,  where 
amid  calm  and  seclusion,  and  the  slow  processes  of  natural 
development,  individuality  is  sacred,  and  originality  is  ma- 
tured, and  each  soul  comes  to  its  own  selfhood. 

In  the  light  of  this  thought  and  the  suggestion  which  it 
brings,  I  think  I  can  see  more  clearly  than  ever  before  the 
mission  and  the  problem  of  our  university.  It  is  to  discover, 
and  encourage,  and  mature  original  native  power.  If  our 
students  as  a  body  have  any  characteristic  which  distinguishes 
them  from  the  general  mass  of  college  students,  it  is  a  rugged 
independence  of  intellect  and  character  which  has  in  it  the 
potentiality  and  the  promise  of  a  very  high  order  of  ability. 
We  have  always  a  few  brilliant  men :  they  are  a  highly  valuable 
element  in  our  college  community:  they  cheer  up  the  life 
of  the  professors:  we  could  do  well  with  more  of  them.  But 
the  majority  are  not  of  this  class.  They  are  well  endowed  in 
their  general  make-up:  their  qualities  are  solid  rather  than 
brilliant:  they  require  from  their  teachers  patience  and  en- 
couragement, and  sometimes  even  nil  desperan  dum:  but 
by  the  middle  of  junior  year  they  begin  to  surprise  their  pro- 
fessors with  the  exhibition  of  real  power.  In  any  truncated 
three  years'  curriculum  they  would  not  come  to  maturity.  At 
the  end  of  their  college  course  it  is  too  much  to  say  in  the 
Oxford  phrase  that  all  of  them  "have  satisfied"  their  in- 
structors— but  they  have  given  hopeful  evidence  of  interior 


CLASSICS  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  159 

power,  of  initiative,  of  originality,  and  their  subsequent 
career  in  the  majority  of  cases  not  only  justifies  this  hope  but 
more  than  rewards  this  faith  in  them  which  we  cherish. 

For  we  have  this  faith  in  our  men  and  yet-  they  are  always 
surprising  us.  They  do  not  have  the  brilliancy  which  flashes 
and  goes  out:  they  have  as  a  class  the  ability  which  grows 
slowly  at  first  but  keeps  on  growing  till  it  attains  power,  and 
mastery,  and  leadership.  I  would,  if  I  dared,  illustrate  my 
point  by  calling  names.  They  would  be  names  of  men  in  all 
professions,  scattered  through  all  parts  of  the  country,  every- 
where leading  men,  but  long  as  the  list  might  be,  some  of  you 
would  say,  "Why  did  you  omit  this  man,  and  this,  and  this?" 
And  they  would  all  be  right.  Enough.  You  will  all,  I 
know,  admit  the  justice  of  my  claim.  It  is  something  we  all 
have  reason  to  be  proud  of.  If  any  other  college  claims  to 
have  some  other  characteristic  equally  honorable,  or  even  this 
same  characteristic  after  their  kind,  we  will  not  deny  or  be- 
grudge them  the  possession  of  it.  We  will  admit  that  our 
men  have  not  a  monopoly  of  the  intellectual  virtues,  and  that 
God  had  a  hand  in  making  other  colleges  than  our  own.  At 
the  same  time,  as  Mr.  Billings  used  to  say  when  he  wanted  to 
defend  some  person  who  was  under  criticism,  "You  must  not 
expect  too  much  of  one  who  was  not  graduated  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Vermont." 

You  see,  Gentlemen,  how  these  serious  and  searching  public 
discussions  are  forcing  upon  us  an  unusual  urgency  of  self- 
consciousness,  and  introspection,  and  challenge,  and  how  we 
are  meeting  the  situation,  by  discovering  our  own  sources  of 
strength,  and  maintaining  our  individuality  with  conviction 
and  confidence.  An  institution  has  the  right  to  live  and 
prosper  which  has  such  a  foundation  in  right  educational  prin- 
ciples, such  a  history  of  achievement  in  all  professions  and 
callings,  such  a  body  of  "men  of  light  and  leading,"  as  the 
University  of  Vermont  can  show  to  the  world  today,  and 
hopes  to  show  more  and  more  in  the  future. 


ON  MIGHTY  PENS 
(The  Creation) 

ON  MY  study  table  I  keep  two  or  three  quill  pens  for  use 
with  red  ink  for  correcting  blue  books.  I  was  quite  taken 
aback  when  one  of  our  younger  professors  happening  in, 
pointed  to  my  pens  and  asked  "What  are  those?"  I  had 
hardly  recovered  from  my  amazement  at  this  kiddishness 
when  another  professor,  somewhat  older,  asked  the  same 
question.  And  both  these  professors,  as  it  happened,  were 
of  the  agricultural  department,  and  one  of  them  had  been 
brought  up  on  a  farm,  presumably  in  daily  companionship 
with  the  goose!  What  I  replied  to  these  gentlemen,  so 
strangely  ignorant  of  literary  ornithology,  was,  in  substance : 

"  These,  my  dear  sirs,  are  pens,  pens  proper,  pens  in  their 
own  right,  not  by  brevet,  not  borrowed  plumes;  pens  ety- 
mologic, the  pens  which  you  declined  in  your  adolescent  First 
Declension;  the  pens  which  are  mightier  than  swords;  the  pens 
that  signed  Magna  Charta  and  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  wrote  Hamlet  and  all  the  great  thoughts  and 
dreams  of  mankind  quite  down  to  these  very  recent  times 
when  Joseph  Gillott  began  to  make  the  metallic  stubbs  which 
you  miscall  pens;  pens,  which  in  clusters  become  'pinions' 
and  bear  aloft  the  Theban  eagle, — or  are  the  ' mighty  pens' 
of  the  Oratorio  quoted  above.  These  particular  pens  which 
you  are  so  curiously  staring  at,  were  once  the  property  of  the 
Bank  of  England,  of  whom,  indirectly,  I  purchased  them. 
For  this  high  and  mighty  institution  is  so  old-fashioned  as 
to  use  only  quill  pens  in  its  business.  These  very  pens,  for 
aught  I  know,  may  have  been  used  for  signing  some  of  those 
cheques  for  fabulous  amounts  which  pass  through  this  cosmo- 
politan clearing-house.  And  this  institution  is  so  fastidious 

160 


ON  MIGHTY  PENS  161 

that  it  never  retains  its  quills  for  a  second  day's  use — on  the 
same  principle,  probably  as  that  on  which  it  never  reissues  its 
notes  however  new  and  crisp  they  may  be — the 'same  prin- 
ciple which  Richardson  carried  out  in  architecture — namely, 
that  good  art  abhors  repetition.  But  as  each  quill  by  succes- 
sive mendings  is  good  for  a  full  week's  work  elsewhere,  the 
subordinates  of  the  Bank  make  honest  shillings  by  selling  the 
discarded  pens  to  bookkeepers  and  scribblers  like  myself. 

"But  this  fastidious  taste  which  clings  to  the  goose-quill 
pen  lingers  elsewhere  than  in  the  Bank  of  England.  Old- 
fashioned  folks,  clerks  in  old  banking-houses,  literary  men  and 
women  who  retain  the  tastes  of  a  former  generation — some 
covertly,  as  a  cherished  distinction — some  openly,  and  with 
a  subtle  claim  of  superiority — more,  probably,  in  old  England 
and  the  Colonies  than  in  the  United  States,  more  in  our  South 
than  in  our  North — still  use  the  quill  pen.  Most  of  us — save 
the  two  young  professors — know  of  such  people  and  can  guess 
others.  Without  knowing  the  fact,  it  would  be  safe  for  us  to 
conjecture  that  among  the  number  would  have  been  Ruskin — 
and  all  the  Pre-Raphaelites — and  Tennyson.  It  is  inconceiv- 
able that  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  should  have  been  written 
with  a  Brummagem  steel  pen!  To  come  nearer  home,  our 
own  Senator  Morrill,  who  in  spirit  and  manner  was  a  gentle- 
man of  the  old  school,  always  wrote  with  a  quill  pen.  I 
have  a  large  number  of  letters  from  him,  some  of  them  written 
in  his  extreme  age,  every  character  betraying  the  flexibility 
of  his  quill  pen,  not  a  slovenly  stroke  anywhere.  It  was  the 
duty — and  I  am  sure  the  pleasure — of  the  janitor  of  the 
Senate  chamber  to  see  that  a  newly-made  pen  was  on  his  desk 
every  morning.  Rev.  Mr.  Ware,  affectionately  remembered 
and  long  to  be  remembered  among  us,  who  was  for  twenty 
years  and  more,  Secretary  of  both  the  Mary  Fletcher  Hospital 
and  the  Fletcher  Free  Library,  kept  the  records  of  both  insti- 
tutions with  a  quill  pen  in  a  quaint  and  puzzling,  but  highly 
artistic  handwriting.  I  can  recall  Mr.  Ware  at  a  session  of  the 
11 


162  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Library  Trustees  mending  his  pen  preparatory  to  making  his 
record,  and  Mr.  Phelps  remarking,  'See  how  the  Secretary  is 
getting  ready  to  conceal  our  proceedings.'  Professor  Henry 
Torrey,  artist  in  everything  he  did,  during  his  long  term  of 
office  as  Secretary  of  the  Faculty,  made  all  his  records  with  a 
quill  pen,  and  in  a  very  graceful  and  scholarly  hand.  Manu- 
scripts in  my  possession  from  the  hand  of  President  Calvin 
Pease  are  written  in  a  beautiful  Porsonian  type  of  letter  impos- 
sible to  any  other  than  a  quill  pen. 

"If  any  one  ask  why  in  our  day  any  one  should  use  an  in- 
strument so  obsolete  that  two  college  professors  had  to  be 
told  what  it  is,  the  answer  would  be  a  manifold  consideration 
of  habit,  and  sentiment,  and  association,  and  perhaps  just  a 
little  of  self-valuation  on  the  score  of  singularity.  The  art 
instinct  in  us  prefers  that  which  is  made  with  human  hands 
to  that  which  is  machine-made.  It  prefers  what  brings 
with  it  history,  and  charming  association,  and  literary  sugges- 
tion, what  is  far-fetched  and  quaint,  to  what  is  new,  and  con- 
ventional, and  common,  and  cheap, —  prefers  it  even  at  the 
expense  of  some  inconvenience  and  want  of  economy.  Who 
would  write  a  letter  to  a  friend,  or  to  a  lover,  with  an  Ester- 
brook,  or  a  Leon  Isaacs,  if  he  had  the  fine  and  now  rare  accom- 
plishment of  shaping  with  his  own  pen-knife  the  pen  which, 
adapted  to  his  own  hand  and  style,  would  responsively  express 
every  turn  and  shade  of  his  thought  and  feeling?  " 

But  I  have  not  quite  done.  Do  you  notice,  Mr.  Editor, 
Mr.  Compositor,  a  change  in  my  manuscript?  In  order  to 
preserve  the  consistencies  I  have  thus  far  written  with  a  goose- 
quill  pen.  Do  you  now  notice  a  change  of  style,  a  finer  and 
more  Italianate  chirography,  if  I  may  say  so?  You  ought, 
for  I  am  now  writing  with  a  crow-quill  pen  which  I  made  from  a 
feather  picked  up  in  Catlin's  Woods.  The  crow-quill  also 
figures  in  literature.  If  I  were  to  seek  for  illustrations  of  it 
for  this  paper,  I  should  call  up  some  of  the  beaux  and  dames 
who  hovered  around  Sir  Charles  Grandison  and  Clarissa 


ON  MIGHTY  PENS  163 

Harlow — or  from  the  sorority,  male  and  female,  who  figure 
in  the  pages  of  Jane  Austen.  Or  I  might  take  De  Quincey's 
suggestion  and  cause  the  English  mail-bags  to  be  rifled  of  their 
contents  and  find  therein,  as  he  says  we  should,  some  of  the 
purest  and  sweetest  English  literature  in  the  much-becrossed 
letters  of  English  women.  But  the  crow-quill  pen  figures 
chiefly  in  calligraphy — in  the  beautiful  pen-work  in  which 
our  ancestors  delighted,  but  which  the  printing-press  and  the 
type-writer  have  almost  supplanted.  The  most  delicate  work 
in  the  MSS.  of  old  times,  the  fine  shadings  and  almost  invisible 
strokes  which  made  the  last  exquisite  finish  of  the  ancient  and 
mediaeval  manuscripts,  were  put  in  with  the  crow-quill  pen. 
These  pens  can  still  be  bought  of  some  of  the  English  and  con- 
tinental stationers. 

Thus  far  I  had  reached  and  was  about  closing  this  bit  of 
gossip  when  my  eye  fell  on  these  words  in  the  "  Contents"  of 
a  book  of  American  Poetry:  " Lines  on  receiving  an  Eagle's- 
Quill  f  rom  Lake  Superior."  How  this  made  my  heart  bound! 
Think  of  it !  If  by  the  pen  plucked  from  the  wing  of  the  domes- 
tic goose  such  marvels  of  song  have  been  written,  what  may 
we  not  expect  when  poets  write  with  pens  dropped  by  the 
eagle  from  the  sky  as  he  soars  amid  the  clouds  above  Lake 
Superior?  Good  heavens!  May  we  not  have  a  new  Dryden, 
an  American  Pindar? 

M.  H.  B. 

University  of  Vermont,  Dec.  20,  1907. 

P.  S. — You  will  note,  Mr.  Editor,  traces  of  the  sand  with  which  the  ink 
of  my  manuscript  was  dried.  There  is  in  it  "no  line  which  I  should  wish 
to  blot"  with  vulgar  blotting-paper.  I  have  to  apologize  for  pale  ink: 
my  last  bottle  of  "Walkden's"  is  used  up. 


BACCALAUREATE  SERMONS 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION 

Whereupon,  O  King,  I  was  not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision. 

Acts  xxvi:  19. 

THE  most  intellectual  and  the  most  logical  of  the  Apostles 
here  declares  himself  a  believer  in  visions.  Indeed  it  appears 
that  as  his  Christian  life  began  with  a  vision,  so  it  was  attended 
with  visions  all  the  way  along.  In  his  epistle  to  the  Corinth- 
ians, he  speaks  of  coming  to  visions  and  revelations  as  things 
quite  familiar  to  him  and  as  though  he  thought  it  not  best  to 
tell  how  much  had  in  this  way  been  vouchsafed  to  him.  When 
a  simple-minded  enthusiast  speaks  thus,  some  devotee  whose 
imagination  has  been  wrought  upon  by  legends  and  mysteries, 
we  can  easily  account  for  the  hallucination.  But  that  this 
clear-headed  thinker,  this  man  of  vigorous  practical  judgment, 
should  have  had  the  whole  current  of  his  life  suddenly  arrested 
and  turned  completely  back  upon  itself  by  an  apparition,  this 
at  first  staggers  and  confounds  us.  How  could  Paul  tell  when 
he  came  to  himself — how  could  any  of  those  tell  who  in  the 
olden  tune  saw  visions  and  dreamed  dreams — whether  the 
vision  was  from  God  or  their  own  fancy?  When  we  first  wake 
after  a  dream  how  vivid  and  real  sometimes  are  the  scenes 
through  which  we  have  gone,  the  voices  we  have  heard,  the 
impressions  made  upon  our  feelings  and  at  times  even  upon 
our  consciences!  And  yet  how  weak  it  would  be  to  resolve 
upon  any  change  of  opinion  or  of  purpose  on  the  strength 
of  such  impressions!  How  soon  they  fade!  How  idle  an 
hour  after  seem  the  alarm,  the  penitence,  the  new  resolution! 
Give  me,  says  the  man  of  reflection,  something  more  solid  and 
stable  as  the  basis  of  my  religious  belief  and  life,  than  the 
baseless  fabric  of  a  vision!  Talk  not  to  me,  says  the  man  of 
science,  of  intuitions,  and  inward  revelations  and  experiences: 

167 


168  THE   VERY   ELECT 

in  such  a  momentous  matter  as  this  I  can  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  short  of  hard,  palpable  facts.  Doubtless  in  some 
such  mood  was  Paul  himself  on  his  way  to  Damascus.  He 
had  prejudged  the  case  against  Christianity,  as  have  so  many 
men  with  no  more  reason  than  he  had.  But  this  vision 
appeared  to  him.  It  was  a  vision  of  the  daytime,  when  every 
sense  of  his  body  and  every  faculty  of  his  mind  were  awake. 
It  addressed  his  reason  and  his  conscience  demanding,  Why 
persecutest  thou  me?  It  not  merely  made  an  impression  on 
his  feelings,  it  was,  as  he  afterward  described  it,  a  new  revela- 
tion. It  sent  him  to  retirement  and  reflection  and  prayer,  out 
of  which  he  came  a  new  man.  Now  what  was  there  in  all  this 
which  requires  us  to  withdraw  from  Paul  the  respect  which  we 
pay  to  a  man  of  vigorous  practical  judgment?  And  wherein 
does  the  conversion  of  Paul  differ  essentially  from  the  con- 
version of  other  men?  That  which  was  miraculous  in  this 
event,  the  sudden  arrest,  the  dazzling  light,  the  audible  voice, 
were  but  accessories:  the  main  thing  was  the  new  revelation 
in  the  soul,  the  flashing  of  the  truth,  the  illumination  of  the 
conscience,  experiences  which  mark  the  epochs  alike  of  birth 
and  growth  in  every  awakened  soul.  And  this  brings  me  to 
the  statement  which  I  shall  commend  to  your  consideration: 
that  spiritual  truth  always  comes  to  the  soul  by  revelation  on 
the  part  of  God  and  by  vision  on  the  part  of  man. 

Religion,  considered  as  an  object  of  thought,  of  belief,  has 
two  departments,  one  consisting  of  facts  and  principles 
deducible  therefrom,  the  other  of  truths.  Considered  in  the 
first  aspect,  religion  is  one  branch  of  science,  as  fully  entitled 
to  the  name  as  any  of  the  sciences.  As  such  it  holds  its  tenets 
subject  to  the  same  logical  conditions  which  induce  belief 
elsewhere.  It  asks  no  easier  terms  of  demonstration,  no 
shorter  road  to  conviction  than  other  sciences  enjoy.  Bishop 
Butler's  Analogy  of  Religion  is  as  thoroughly  scientific  a 
treatise  as  Newton's  Principia.  And  one  of  the  notable 
achievements  of  our  scientific  age,  one  for  which  thanks  and 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION  169 

felicitations  are  due  from  us  all,  is  a  marked  advance  in  the 
science  of  religion,  in  the  critical  investigation,  the  analysis 
and  synthesis  of  the  principles  of  Christianity.  But  in 
another  aspect  of  it  Christianity  is  not  demonstrable.  That 
is  to  say,  it  holds  certain  truths,  and  those  the  most  essential 
and  far-reaching  of  all,  which  cannot  be  reached  by  demon- 
stration. Science  itself  acknowledges  such  truths  and  in  fact 
builds  upon  them  its  whole  vast  fabric.  If  the  critic  of 
geometry  should,  like  the  critic  of  religion,  challenge  the  first 
unproved  statement  and  arrest  all  progress  till  it  should  be 
proved,  there  would  not  be  today,  nor  in  any  future  age,  any 
possibility  of  geometric  science,  or  consequently  of  architecture, 
or  astronomy,  or  navigation.  A  score  of  sciences  and  a  hun- 
dred arts  all  depend  on  the  validity  of  one  or  two  statements 
on  the  first  page  of  the  geometry  for  which  the  only  possible 
proof  is  that  we  must  believe  them  and  cannot  help  it.  Now 
that  which  is  true  of  science  is  true  in  a  large  and  more  impor- 
tant sense  of  religion.  Its  prime  truths,  its  essential  and  in 
some  respects  its  most  important  truths,  are  out  of  the  reach 
of  demonstration.  This  is  not  saying  that  they  are  irrational, 
but  that  the  spiritual  reason  which  apprehends  them  is  a 
different  faculty  from  the  logical  understanding,  and  works 
by  different  methods.  That  the  whole  is  equal  to  the  sum  of 
all  its  parts,  and  that  infinity  is  greater  than  the  sum  of  all 
finite  quantities,  I  know  by  intuitive  reason.  That  the 
Supreme  Being  is  holy  and  good  and  that  the  supreme  good 
for  man  is  to  be  like  him,  I  know,  at  least  I  recognize  and 
approve,  by  my  spiritual  reason.  For  it  is  not  meant  that 
because  of  this  power  of  spiritual  vision  we  can  dispense  with 
revelation,  but  that  we  can  perceive  the  truth  as  revealed 
without  the  intervention  of  any  logical  demonstration.  Notice 
how  revelation  itself  throughout  assumes  the  existence  of  this 
spiritual  capacity.  The  most  common  mode  of  expression 
in  the  Bible,  which  is  so  constantly  recurring  and  in  so  many 
different  forms  that  it  may  almost  be  styled  the  characteristic 


170  THE  VERY  ELECT 

figure  of  Scripture,  is  that  which  represents  truth  as  the  object 
of  vision,  revelati'on  as  the  light  or  medium  of  vision,  and  the 
soul  as  seeing.  Faith  is  denned  by  the  Apostle  as  "  seeing 
things  not  seen,"  that  is,  seeing  in  a  supernatural  light  things 
not  visible  in  natural  light.  If  I  were  to  read  all  the  texts 
that  imply  this  doctrine,  those  for  instance  which  exhort  us 
to  "look  unto  God,"  to  "look  unto  Jesus,"  those  which 
describe  the  word  as  a  "light,"  as  "giving  light"  by  its 
entrance,  as  "enlightening  the  eyes  of  the  understanding," 
those  which  set  forth  the  Saviour  as  "the  light  of  the  world" 
and  as  "bringing  life  and  immortality  to  light,"  I  should  read 
a  large  part  of  both  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New. 

This  appears  further  from  the  style  of  Revelation.  It  does 
not  address  itself  to  the  pure  intellect.  It  does  not  speak  in 
abstract  propositions  set  forth  in  logical  statement  and 
sequence.  It  does  not  betray  any  anxiety  to  get  our  assent. 
It  tells  us  in  the  most  simple  way  what  to  believe  and  how  to 
obey.  There  is  not  a  single  complete  demonstration  in  the 
Bible.  It  relates  facts  like  one  who  brings  tidings  eagerly 
waited  for.  It  reveals  truths  as  one  who  should  say:  "Here 
is  food  for  the  hungry;  eat  and  be  welcome.  Here  is  water 
for  the  thirsty;  drink  to  your  fill."  It  offers  no  official  guar- 
anty that  the  food  is  wholesome  and  the  water  pure ;  it  provides 
no  apparatus  for  testing  them.  It  assumes  that  there  is  a 
spiritual  palate  which  can  distinguish  meat  from  poison. 
When  we  forget  this  fundamental  and  characteristic  principle 
of  revelation,  when  we  err  first  by  attempting  to  formulate  a 
spiritual  truth  in  terms  of  the  logical  understanding,  and  then 
disagreeing  as  to  its  accuracy,  fall  to  disputing  and  wrangling, 
and  bring  in  our  scholastic  tricks  for  outwitting  one  another, 
and  finally  carry  the  case  for  adjudication  to  the  same  court 
that  settles  disputes  in  matters  of  mere  fact  and  sense,  we  act 
just  as  irrationally  as  one  who  should  seek  to  decide  a  question 
of  taste  by  statute  law  or  the  diagnosis  of  a  disease  by  astrol- 
ogy. If  a  revealed  truth  is  obscure  to  us,  we  have  but  to  open 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION  171 

our  eyes  wider  by  relaxing  the  prejudices  which  half  close 
them ;  to  purge  from  them  by  purer  living  the  films  and  motes 
which  obstruct  our  vision;  to  gain  by  prayerful  activity  a 
loftier  specular  mount  of  spiritual  life  from  which  to  observe 
them.  If  the  tones  of  revelation  sound  confused  and  dis- 
cordant in  our  ears,  we  must  retire  into  the  serener  air  where 
secular  noises  cannot  reach  us,  we  must  by  devout  meditation 
get  our  spirits  retuned  to  finer  harmonies  and  lay  our  ears  more 
softly  to  the  chords  along  which  the  divine  spirit  whispers  to 
the  listening  soul. 

We  find  this  view  also  abundantly  confirmed  by  experience. 
I  need  only  remind  you  of  cases  like  those  of  Augustine  and 
Luther  and  Bunyan;  to  which  it  would  be  easy  to  add  a  score 
of  others,  of  men  into  whose  souls  at  some  unlocked  for  and 
improbable  juncture,  truth  has  darted  like  a  flash  of  lightning 
with  startling  and  convincing  power,  or  has  beamed  with  a 
mild  radiance,  bringing  a  calm  repose  of  faith  that  years  of 
study  and  spiritual  wrestling  had  failed  to  attain.  I  might 
also  suggest,  without  offering  any  explanation  of  it,  how  often 
this  breaking  in  of  spiritual  light  has  been  attended  with  vivid 
sensations  as  though  coming  from  actual  voices  and  appear- 
ances analogous  to  those  of  Paul's  heavenly  vision.  But  con- 
ceding that  all  this  may  be  delusion,  it  must  be  admitted  by  all 
readers  of  biography  that  the  successive  stages  of  growth  in 
men  of  character  and  reflection  can  almost  always  be  traced 
from  their  moments  of  illumination.  Indeed  the  one  experi- 
ence common  to  all  men  of  progressive  life  and  power,  which 
might  almost  be  written  out  as  a  commonplace  for  every 
biography,  is  something  like  this:  On  some  occasion,  with  or 
without  antecedent  preparation,  but  usually  breaking  in  upon 
the  immediate  train  of  association,  some  great  truth  intellectual 
or  spiritual,  in  the  old  and  expressive  phrase,  was  borne  in 
upon  the  soul,  flooding  it  with  light  and  joy,  allaying  previous 
unrest  and  kindling  new  aspirations  in  the  light  of  which  all 
objects  changed  their  relative  positions,  their  shapes  and 


172  THE  VERY  ELECT 

hues,  and  in  the  possession  of  which  the  man  felt  himself  to 
be  in  some  important  sense  another  man  than  he  was.  To 
many  men  this  experience  has  come  not  once  only  but  repeat- 
edly and  at  shorter  intervals,  so  that  at  last  the  light  which 
came  to  them  at  first  in  flashes,  now  comes  in  a  broad,  steady 
beam. 

And  now  I  think  I  may  leave  the  testimony  of  biography 
and  of  history,  and  appeal  to  universal  experience.  I  may 
turn  to  you  who  are  listening  to  me  and  ask  whether  there  has 
not  been  something  in  your  own  lives,  some  sweet  heavenly 
vision,  whose  remembrance  confirms  the  truth  I  am  main- 
taining. If  so,  if  there  is  some  white  day  in  your  past  when 
your  eyes  opened  to  see  some  great  truth  and  your  heart 
opened  to  take  it  in,  you  need  no  argument  to  convince  you 
that  this  seeing  of  visions  is  no  impossibility  and  no  illusion. 
He  who  is  not  conscious  of  having  had  such  revelations  may 
doubt  their  reality  or  distrust  the  guidance  they  offer:  he  who 
has  seen  and  obeyed  a  heavenly  vision  can  do  neither.  He 
may  err  in  his  judgment  upon  its  accessories;  he  may  ascribe 
too  much  to  the  miraculous  and  too  little  to  the  ordinary 
agencies  of  the  Spirit  of  all  truth;  but  that  he  has  seen  a  vision, 
that  a  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or  land  has  visited  him, 
that  the  curtains  of  the  invisible  world  have  for  an  instant 
been  parted  before  him  and  that  he  has  gazed  on  things  beyond 
mortal  ken, — this  belief  you  cannot  wrest  away  from  him  by 
argument,  or  authority,  or  ridicule. 

But  what  shall  we  do  with  false  visions,  with  pretended 
revelations  and  the  intuitions  of  the  extreme  mystics?  We 
must  treat  them  exactly  as  we  treat  similar  cases  in  actual 
vision.  Sailors  often  mistake  clouds  for  land.  Even  the 
keen-sighted  Arab  is  misled  by  the  mirage.  But  all  this  does 
not  invalidate  the  accuracy  of  natural  vision,  nor  men's 
confidence  in  it.  Every  time  that  you  and  I  looking  upon  a 
mountain,  or  a  cloud,  or  a  flower,  speak  of  them  as  though  they 
were  the  same  to  us  both,  we  virtually  set  to  our  seal  that  God 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION  173 

is  true,  that  he  has  not  made  our  senses  to  deceive  us.  We 
sometimes  think  a  cloud  to  be  a  mountain,  we  sometimes 
mistake  an  exhalation  of  our  own  fancy  for  one  of  the  ever- 
lasting hills  of  God's  revealed  law.  Is  it  a  cloud  that  I  see 
from  my  window  in  the  dim  distance  among  the  Adirondack 
peaks,  or  is  it  the  summit  of  Mount  Marcy?  I  cannot  always 
tell.  But  when  Mansfield  stands  out  clear  and  sharp  against 
the  afternoon  sun,  as  firm  as  the  promise  of  God  on  the 
spiritual  horizon,  it  is  of  no  use  to  remind  me  that  yesterday 
I  mistook  a  cloud  for  Mount  Marcy.  The  great  spiritual 
truths  are  set  near  me  and  round  about  me  and  I  have  but  to 
lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills  whence  cometh  my  help. 

But  I  now  go  a  step  farther  and  contend  that  not  only  can 
the  human  spirit  apprehend  spiritual  truth  directly  without 
the  intervention  of  logical  demonstration,  but  that  it  can 
apprehend  such  truth  in  no  other  way.  A  fact  can  be  com- 
municated by  testimony,  a  scientific  truth  by  demonstration, 
a  spiritual  idea  only  by  vision.  When  Newton  put  the  world 
in  possession  of  the  logic  by  which  he  established  the  great 
laws  which  bear  his  name,  every  man  capable  of  feeling  the 
cogency  of  mathematical  reasoning  might  be  as  certain  of 
those  laws  as  was  Newton  himself.  But  not  so  of  a  spiritual 
truth.  Here  every  man  must  see  for  himself.  Take  for 
example  the  being  of  God.  The  assertion  is  not  that  it  is 
impossible  to  prove  the  being  of  God,  but  that  the  proof  would 
have  no  cogency  with  a  mind  unwilling  or  unable  to  believe 
in  God  without  the  argument.  Let  an  atheist  read  Barrow's, 
or  Clarke's,  or  Paley's  argument,  and  will  he  as  he  reaches  its 
triumphant  conclusion,  fall  on  his  knees  and  exclaim,  "My 
Lord  and  my  God?"  No!  But  in  some  auspicious  moment, 
he  hears  the  voice  of  God,  in  his  works,  or  in  his  word,  saying 
simply,  "I  am:"  he  opens  his  spiritual  eyes  and  sees  God, 
dimly  and  remotely,  but  actually:  he  gets  a  glimpse  of  his 
divine  glory  and  beauty,  and  now  he  adores  and  never  again 
can  he  be  a  complete  atheist.  Another  man  doubts  the 


174  THE  VERY  ELECT 

validity  of  prayer.  You  give  him  an  impregnable  argument 
drawn  from  the  nature  of  God  and  of  man,  from  the  declara- 
tions of  Scripture  and  from  the  experiences  of  devout  men. 
He  finds  it  impossible  to  break  your  line  of  argument,  but  he 
does  not  pray.  He  challenges  you  to  a  trial  of  the  medicinal 
power  of  prayer  on  the  patients  in  a  particular  ward  of  a 
hospital.  Suppose  that  the  challenge  were  accepted  and  that 
marvellous  recoveries  immediately  ensue.  Will  he  pray  now? 
Who  is  so  credulous  as  to  think  it?  But  in  some  hour  of  great 
distress  or  of  great  joy,  perhaps  as  he  paces  his  room  at  mid- 
night while  in  the  hushed  chamber  above  a  struggle  is  impend- 
ing between  Life  and  Death  for  one  he  loves  better  than  his 
own  soul,  perhaps  in  the  moment  of  overwhelming  joy  which 
reveals  the  crisis  safely  passed  and  the  life  saved,  his  whole 
soul  goes  out  to  God  in  supplication  or  in  gratitude.  Behold 
he  prays!  His  faith  has  broken  through  the  adamantine 
chains  which  pride  and  unbelief  had  forged  and  which  argument 
could  not  loosen,  and  has  cast  itself  in  humility  before  the 
throne  of  grace.  For  him  henceforth  and  forever  that  throne 
of  grace  abides.  He  has  seen  it.  He  may  turn  his  back  upon 
it,  but  he  knows  it  is  there.  He  may  turn  his  face  toward  it, 
and  waves  of  passion  and  mountains  of  sin  may  hide  it  from 
him:  but  he  knows  that  it  is  there. 

I  have  time  only  to  suggest  how  mercifully  this  spiritual 
economy  is  adapted  to  the  diversified  endowments  and  oppor- 
tunities of  men.  If  spiritual  knowledge  and  spiritual  life 
depended  largely  upon  logical  acumen,  it  would  go  hard  with 
all  our  race  save  a  few  score  of  philosophers.  But  by  God's 
grace  the  philosopher  has  no  advantage  over  the  wayfaring 
man  though  simple.  The  highest  and  grandest  of  all  truths 
beams  alike  upon  the  sage  who  from  his  lonely  watch-tower 
can  unsphere  the  spirit  of  Plato  and  upon  the  simple  souls 
gathered  reverently  round  the  big  ha'  Bible  on  the  Cottar's 
Saturday  night.  When  some  scholastic  pedant  in  the  vanity 
of  his  argumentative  skill  endeavors  to  confuse  the  faith  of 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION  175 

plain  people  by  perplexing  their  intellectual  conceptions, 
there  is  one  reply  which,  thank  God,  they  not  only  always  will 
make,  but  which  is  a  perfectly  reasonable  one  to  make:  "You 
may  stop  my  mouth  in  argument :  you  may  bewilder  my  weak 
intellect  with  your  learning;  but  let  me  get  home  and  get  my 
old  Bible  in  my  hands,  and  I  care  not  for  all  your  fine  logic. 
Whether  the  rulers  believe  or  no,  I  know  not;  what  the  scribes 
believe  or  disbelieve,  I  am  not  answerable  for;  one  thing  I 
know,  that  whereas  I  was  blind,  now  I  see."  And  because  of 
this  answer  from  myriads  of  believing  souls  in  all  generations, 
rather  tTian  because  of  the  apologies  and  the  argumentative 
defences  of  Christianity,  vital  religion  survives  and  grows  and 
triumphs  in  the  minds  and  in  the  lives  of  men. 

The  question  is  sometimes  asked,  and  with  great  anxiety, 
"Can  Christianity  maintain  itself  with  thinking  men?" 
The  answer  is,  Christianity  is  for  men  as  men.  It  addresses 
itself  with  vast  advantage  to  men  who  think,  provided  they 
also  love,  and  revere,  and  worship.  But  it  is  not  a  religion  of 
the  intellect  merely.  It  satisfies,  it  glorifies  the  intellect,  but 
it  does  not  give  to  pure  intellect  the  key  which  unlocks  its 
mysteries,  but  to  faith.  Whosoever  receiveth  not  the  King- 
dom of  God  as  a  little  child,  with  a  child's  large  round  open 
eyes  to  see,  and  a  child's  heart  to  trust,  shall  by  no  means 
enter  therein. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  practical  point  of  this  discussion. 
The  vision  enjoins  something;  the  truth  requires  not  acqui- 
escence merely  but  obedience.  A  spiritual  vision  is  not  a 
sweet,  idyllic  dream  of  something  fair  and  bright  on  which  we 
gaze  with  half-shut  eyes  on  a  summer  afternoon.  It  is  a 
glimpse  of  duty;  it  is  a  flash  of  light  on  the  pathway  that  lies 
before  us.  When  a  scientific  truth  has  been  reached  by 
demonstration  the  intellect  says,  "I  am  convinced."  When 
a  new  spiritual  truth  rises  above  the  soul's  horizon,  the  con- 
science says,  "Obey  it."  I  may  be  convinced  that  the  worlds 
above  me  are  inhabited,  or  that  they  are  not  inhabited;  either 


176  THE  VERY  ELECT 

opinion  will  affect  my  conduct  but  slightly.  But  is  the  soul 
immortal?  Can  sin  be  forgiven?  Does  God  answer  prayer? 
These  questions  touch  me  very  closely.  A  clear  answer  to 
these  questions  sends  me  immediately  this  way  or  that  way  on 
some  duty  which  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  decline.  For  these 
questions  are  not  answered  just  as  they  are  asked.  When  the 
curious  scribe  asked  our  Lord,  "Are  there  few  that  be  saved?" 
the  answer  was,  " Strive  thou  to  enter  in  at  the  strait  gate." 
So  when  we  ask,  "Is  man  immortal?"  the  reply  is,  "Prepare 
thyself  for  thine  own  immortality."  "Does  God  answer 
prayer?"  "Ask  and  it  shall  be  given  you."  It  is  not  for  the 
satisfaction  of  our  curiosity,  not  ultimately  for  the  enlargement 
of  our  spiritual  knowledge,  that  heavenly  visions  appear  unto 
us,  but  that  they  may  beckon  and  guide  us  upward  along  the 
path  of  obedience  to  heavenly  heights  of  holy  living. 

When,  therefore,  the  apostle  uttered  these  words,  "I  was 
not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision,"  he  enunciated  in 
substance  the  law  at  once  of  spiritual  knowledge  and  of  the 
spiritual  life.  God  sends  into  our  natural  darkness  the  light 
of  his  truth:  our  part  is,  first,  to  open  our  eyes  and  see;  secondly, 
to  obey  what  we  see.  By  the  first  act  we  get  knowledge;  by 
the  second,  life.  The  enlarged  life  enables  us  in  turn  to  attain 
higher  knowledge:  the  increased  knowledge  in  its  turn  helps 
us  on  to  higher  life.  And  thus  the  range  of  being  expands,  like 
circles  in  water  or  waves  of  ether,  for  ever  and  ever. 

"I  was  not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision."  Happy  he 
who  at  the  close  of  life  can  say  this  of  all  his  past!  "In  my 
childhood  when  God  came  to  me  as  I  lay  slumbering  in  the 
temple  of  unconscious  innocence  and  called  me  by  my  name 
three  times,  I  answered,  'Speak  Lord,  for  thy  servant  heareth.' 
In  my  ardent  and  susceptible  youth,  when  visions  came 
thronging  in  upon  me,  visions  from  above  and  visions  from  my 
own  fancy,  visions  of  good  and  of  evil,  I  broke  the  spell  of  all 
visions  of  pleasure,  I  tore  the  disguise  from  the  specious  visions 
of  sin,  and  I  obeyed  the  heavenly  visions  which  beckoned  me  to 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION  177 

a  life  of  duty  and  piety.  In  my  manhood,  when  I  felt  the 
terrible  power  of  all  the  influences  which  tended  to  make  me 
hard,  worldly,  and  sceptical,  I  often  stole  away  to  the  mount 
of  prayer  and  saw  again,  as  in  my  youth,  the  heavens  opened 
and  the  angels  of  God  ascending  and  descending,  and  in  the 
strength  of  those  visions  I  overcame  the  world.  And  so  in 
my  old  age,  when  to  most  men  the  vision  fails,  when  it  is 
proverbially  said  that  no  new  truth  beams  upon  the  enfeebled 
intellectual  sight,  God  has  vouchsafed  to  me,  as  he  did  to  his 
aged  servant,  Isaiah  the  Prophet,  visions  of  good  things  to 
come  so  full  and  glorious  that,  like  him,  I  am  always  breaking 
forth  into  song."  Such  would  be  the  earthly  experience  of  one 
who  uniformly  obeyed  the  heavenly  vision;  and  this  heavenly 
experience  was  anticipated  by  this  same  apostle  when  he  wrote : 
"Now  we  see  through  a  glass,  darkly,  but  then  face  to  face." 

Gentlemen  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

It  is  expressly  declared  in  Scripture  that  in  these  latter  days 
young  men  shall  see  visions.  This  is  one  of  the  privileges,  and 
one  of  the  greatest  privileges  of  youth.  To  you  truth  comes  in 
the  tinted  and  glorified  forms  of  a  vision,  rather  than  in  the  dry- 
light  of  philosophy.  Therein  lies  for  you  the  possibility  of  enthu- 
siasm, and  generous  faith,  and  noble  ambition.  During  these 
years  past,  while  you  have  been  faithfully  accomplishing  the 
formal  and  preceptive  part  of  your  education  with  such  guidance 
and  help  as  we  could  render,  the  Divine  Spirit  has  been  carrying 
on  another  part  of  it  in  which  we  have  had  no  share,  opening  the 
eyes  of  your  spiritual  understanding  to  behold  truths  far  out  of 
reach  of  your  natural  powers.  And  now  that  you  have  satisfac- 
torily endured  all  our  questioning,  and  have  fairly  won  the  acade- 
mic honors  which  you  are  soon  to  receive,  there  is  another  question 
more  important  and  far-reaching,  which  you  must  answer  to 
yourselves  and  to  God, — Have  you  obeyed  the  heavenly  visions? 

It  would  be  a  wrong  inference  from  what  I  have  been  saying 

to  suppose  that  your  long  and  laborious  education  has  given 
12 


178  THE  VERY  ELECT 

you  no  advantage  over  other  men  in  the  handling  of  religious 
truth.  To  stop  the  mouths  of  infidels  and  scoffers,  to  remove 
objections  to  the  truth  in  the  minds  of  the  candid  and  thought- 
ful, to  persuade  men  to  come  out  of  the  darkness  of  evil-doing 
into  the  light  where  God's  truth  shines — these  and  other 
possible  services  will  always  occupy  and  dignify  cultivated 
intellect.  And  here  and  there  over  the  land  where  the  provi- 
dence of  God  may  place  you  ,  we  shall  expect  to  hear  that  every 
one  of  you  is  rendering  good  service  in  this  cause.  You  may 
always  be  sure  that  the  old  college  will  not  lose  sight  of  you, 
and  that  we  shall  be  proud  and  happy  when  we  hear  of  your 
success.  But  after  all,  remember — and  especially  because  of 
the  temptation  to  intellectual  pride,  remember — that  as  the 
sun  rises  and  shines  on  gentle  and  simple  alike,  so  the  light  of 
saving  truth  beams  as  directly  upon  the  simplest  and  humblest 
of  God's  children  as  upon  you.  Do  not,  therefore,  be  ashamed 
of  obvious  truths.  Do  not  reject  them  or  think  you  must 
amend  them  because  they  are  common  to  you  and  to  inferior 
minds.  Be  not  ashamed  of  Jesus  Christ  because  the  poor 
believe  in  him  and  some  of  the  rulers  do  not.  The  most 
obvious  truths  are  often  the  most  important  ones.  Do  not 
set  your  scientific  intellect  to  keep  watch  and  ward  against 
all  truth  that  comes  not  that  way.  Open  a  way  through  your 
heart  also;  keep  your  whole  nature  open  to  heavenly  visitants. 
Your  natural  associations  will  be  with  men  of  culture,  but 
keep  close  also  to  men  who  have  warm  hearts,  and  saintly 
characters,  men  of  sympathy  and  faith  and  prayer. 

And  so  the  day  long  hoped  for,  when  your  last  college  lesson 
should  be  over,  has  come.  It  seems  to  be  my  duty,  my 
painful  and  yet  pleasant  duty,  to  give  you  your  last  lesson, 
painful  because  it  is  the  last,  and  yet  pleasant  because  words 
spoken  at  this  hour  are  likely  to  be  long  remembered.  Let 
the  lesson,  then,  be  this — and  my  colleagues  will  all  join  me 
in  saying  it — that  we  were  never  so  anxious  to  impress  a  lesson 
deeply  and  indelibly  upon  your  minds,  as  this:  "Be  not  dis- 
obedient unto  the  heavenly  vision." 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER 

"For  God  hath  not  given  us  the  spirit  of  fear,  but  of  power."     //  Timothy  i:  7. 

IT  WAS  natural  that  the  taunt  implied  in  these  words  should 
have  been  brought  against  Christianity;  it  was  natural  that 
the  Apostle  Paul  should  resent  it.  The  manly  virtues  had 
had  a  rich  development  under  the  old  Greek  and  Roman 
civilizations.  To  deny  that  would  be  disingenuous.  Paul 
was  himself  far  from  denying  it.  When  he  wrote  in  the  Greek 
tongue,  emphasizing  the  one  Greek  word  which  had  been  the 
rallying  cry  of  Grecian  heroism  through  eight  centuries  of 
history,  "in  the  Liberty  wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free, 
stand  ye  fast;"  when  he  warned  an  officer  of  the  danger  of 
doing  anything  derogatory  to  the  dignity  of  "a  man  that  is  a 
Roman;"  he  did  homage,  and  challenged  the  world's  homage, 
to  those  virtues  which  the  Greek  and  the  Roman  had  so  grandly 
exhibited.  It  must  be  confessed  that  any  new  religion  that 
should  undertake  to  surpass  the  old  civilizations  hi  respect 
to  these  virtues,  had  before  it  no  easy  task.  But  just  this 
was  the  task  which  confronted  Christianity  and  from  which 
it  could  not  and  cannot  excuse  itself.  It  must  show  itself 
capable  of  producing,  along  with  all  other  virtues,  these  essen- 
tial and  constituent  elements  of  high  character,  and  that  too 
of  a  purer  and  nobler  strain  than  they  have  reached  under 
any  other  influences,  or  it  must  confess  its  inferiority.  Now 
we  find  that  the  general  judgment,  both  that  of  the  thinking 
few  and  of  the  unthinking  many,  went  against  Christianity 
in  the  first  instance,  as  being  lacking  in  the  manly  qualities. 
The  early  Christians  were  accused  of  indolence,  of  apathy, 
of  a  contemplative  and  mystic  inefficiency.  By  an  easy  play 
upon  words,  for  the  name  of  Christian  was  substituted  another 

179 


180  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Greek   word   which    taunted    them   with   being   "good-for- 
nothing." 

This  reproach  was  not  forgotten  at  a  later  time  when  Chris- 
tianity was  assailed  by  Celsus  and  Julian.  And  if  we  put  our- 
selves back  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  Greek  philos- 
opher and  the  Roman  statesman  got  their  first  superficial 
estimate  of  Christianity,  we  shall  see  how  liable  they  were  to 
mistake  its  spirit.  It  does  not  seem  to  magnify  the  manly 
virtues  as  do  some  of  the  old  moralities.  In  the  utterances 
of  its  founder,  in  the  attitude  and  temper  of  its  earliest  dis- 
ciples and  representatives,  the  qualities  it  emphasizes  seem  to 
be  of  another  sort.  "  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,"  appar- 
ently the  key-note  of  the  new  teaching,  sounded  like  com- 
mendation of  a  tame,  submissive,  craven  spirit,  which  to  them 
was  the  essence  of  all  that  is  despicable.  And  when  these 
Christians,  followers  of  a  leader  who  instead  of  fighting  for  his 
cause  had  submitted  to  death  without  resistance,  like  him 
yielded  to  their  persecutors  and  returned  only  prayers  and 
smiles  for  curses  and  death-blows,  the  lookers-on  regarded 
them  with  something  of  the  feeling  which  we  have  toward  an 
animal,  which  instead  of  resisting  our  attacks  crouches  down 
in  mortal  terror  before  us  and  yields  to  its  fate  at  our  hands. 
It  is  true  that  Socrates,  who  in  this  respect  was  a  Christian 
before  Christ,  had  meekly  yielded  his  life  to  persecution 
for  the  truth's  sake,  but  he  too  was  misunderstood  and 
unappreciated.  Far  more  sympathy  and  applause  were 
awarded  to  that  haughty,  stoic  spirit  which  refusing  to  yield 
to  defeat  sought  death  from  the  sword.  It  was  a  long  time 
before  the  world,  accustomed  to  associate  courage  with  aggres- 
sion and  resistance,  could  recognize  an  equal,  possibly  a  higher 
type  of  it,  in  fortitude.  The  human  mind  could  not  then 
appreciate  the  austere  glory  of  suffering.  Nor  does  Christian- 
ity in  our  own  time  entirely  escape  this  suspicion  of  being 
mild  and  innocent  instead  of  being  commanding  and  forceful. 
If  a  man  were  sought  for  a  position  of  great  daring  and  enter- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  181 

prise,  to  be  commander  of  an  army  or  of  an  exploring  expe- 
dition in  the  northern  seas,  I  fear  that  it  would  not  be  deemed 
essential  to  choose  a  man  who  was  a  Christian  rather  than  an 
unbeliever  or  one  indifferent,  hi  order  to  make  sure  that  he 
possessed  these  high  qualities. 

And  again  what  means  this  notion,  unquestionably  lurking 
hi  a  great  number  of  minds,  that  great  intellectual  force  is 
something  alien  to  Christianity,  or  if  not  alien,  yet  out  of  place, 
not  wanted,  troublesome  rather  than  helpful.  Not  to  speak 
of  the  fear  which  attends  a  man  of  great  vigor  and  originality, 
lest  he  do  some  damage  to  religion  if  within  the  church,  is  it  not 
the  popular  judgment  that  such  a  man  will  find  his  most  fitting 
place  elsewhere,  while  the  best  servants  of  the  church  must  be 
found  among  the  moderate  and  the  docile.  Regret  it  as  we 
may,  the  fact  that  the  church  is  so  largely  made  up  of  men  of 
ordinary  intellectual  gifts,  and  that  so  many  superior  men  are 
outside  and  antagonistic,  must  of  necessity  do  something  to 
divorce  in  the  public  mind  the  idea  of  religion  from  the  idea 
of  high  intelligence,  and  thus  expose  Christianity  to  the  sus- 
picion of  intellectual  inferiority.  There  are  few  things  more 
trying  to  a  man  who  thinks  that  his  religion  is  based  on  con- 
viction, few  things  that  so  drive  him  to  examine  again  and  again 
the  grounds  of  his  faith,  as  to  see  so  many  professional  men,  so 
many  business  men  of  large  ability,  so  many  men  of  excellent 
judgment  and  unimpeachable  good  sense  in  all  other  relations, 
standing  apart  from  the  Christian  church,  eyeing  it,  as  it 
were,  askance,  withholding  from  it  that  only  sincere  respect 
which  is  evidenced  by  self-committal  and  co-operation.  Would 
it,  or  would  it  not,  be  fair  to  understand  them  as  meaning, 
and  yet  out  of  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  others  refrain- 
ing from  saying:  "I  regard  religion  as  something  fit  and  good 
for  children,  for  women,  for  sentimental  and  effeminate  men; 
I  think  enough  of  it  to  give  to  it  my  money,  my  public  counte- 
nance, my  bodily  attendance,  but  not  enough  to  give  to  it 
my  all  in  all  of  conviction,  affection,  action." 


182  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Now  either  Christianity  deserves  that  supreme  respect  and 
devotion  which  men  give  to  a  power  which  wholly  overmasters 
and  dominates  them,  or  it  is  a  failure  and  an  imposition.  If 
it  is  not  everything,  it  is  nothing.  Talk  not  of  its  salutary 
influence  on  minds  of  a  certain  order,  or  of  its  tendency  to  foster 
certain  amiable  virtues,  or  of  its  wholesome  social  restraints. 
If  it  cannot  compel  your  respect,  it  will  not  accept  your  patron- 
age. If  it  does  not  meet  the  needs  of  all  minds,  and  all  minds 
equally;  if  it  does  not  foster  every  virtue  equally  and  to  the 
utmost;  if  it  does  not  ennoble  and  empower  society  as  well  as 
restrain  it,  Christianity  has  not  the  power  it  claims.  Show  me 
some  philosophy,  or  some  social  or  moral  system  which  is 
adapted  to  produce  any  one  of  the  virtues  in  finer  perfection 
than  Christianity  can  produce  it,  and  I  will  acknowledge 
Christianity  to  be  a  failure.  Take  these  virtues  now  under 
consideration.  Convince  any  candid  man  that  the  Christian 
religion  does  not  succeed  in  making  men  as  brave  both  physi- 
cally and  morally,  as  resolute  in  the  assertion  of  will-power, 
as  defiant  of  opposition  and  heroic  in  resistance,  when  need 
arises,  as  some  other  theory  of  human  life  does,  then  he  is 
bound  to  transfer  his  allegiance  to  that  other  system  whatever 
it  may  be — because,  whatever  other  virtues  he  may  have 
or  not  have,  without  these  he  is  something  less  than  a  man. 
If  God  has  not  given  us  in  the  Gospel  the  spirit  of  power  and  of 
a  sound  mind,  but  of  fear,  let  us  by  all  means  betake  ourselves 
to  some  pagan  shrine  or  some  philosopher's  grove,  where  we 
may  at  least  learn  to  be  men,  even  if  we  cannot  aspire  to  be 
angels  or  gods. 

It  should  not,  therefore,  surprise  us  that  this  most  thorough- 
going expounder  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  at  the  same  time 
this  bravest  and  manliest  of  men,  should  assert,  as  he  does, 
with  some  warmth,  that  God  hath  not  given  us  the  spirit  of 
fear.  The  Christian  spirit  is  not  the  timorous,  craven  spirit, 
that  must  ask  leave  to  be  and  to  have  an  opinion  and  express 
it,  and  that  is  always  apologizing  for  presuming  to  occupy 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  183 

space  and  consume  time  in  the  universe  of  being.  The  Scrip- 
ture speaks  commendingly  of  the  broken  heart;  it  would  be 
nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  it  speaks  gently,  encouragingly 
to  the  broken  heart.  It  is  broken-down  stubbornness,  not 
broken-down  resoluteness,  that  it  commends.  The  best 
exemplifications  of  the  Christian  temper  are  not  broken- 
spirited  but  high-spirited  men.  Paul  himself  was  broken 
down  on  his  way  to  Damascus.  He  left  there  in  the  highway 
his  Jewish  obduracy  and  hate.  But  all  through  his  Christian 
career  he  was  one  of  the  most  high-spirited  of  men,  withstand- 
ing Peter  to  his  face  because  he  was  to  be  blamed ;  giving  place 
by  subjection  to  certain  meddlers,  no,  not  for  an  hour;  hurling 
his  fierce  wrath  upon  the  High  Priest  for  his  unwarranted 
assault  and  then  apologizing  as  only  a  large-minded  gentleman 
would,  for  an  unintentional  affront  to  the  sacred  office;  and 
amid  all  the  trials  and  persecutions  of  those  thirty  years, 
animating  his  own  and  his  followers'  zeal  by  martial  strains 
worthy  of  the  famous  soldier-poet  of  the  Spartans. 

There  have  been  men,  there  have  been  Christian  sects, 
whose  favorite  language  in  their  devotional  exercises  abounded 
in  self-disparagement,  characterizing  them  as  vile,  as  worms 
of  the  dust,  as  nothing  and  less  than  nothing.  This  language 
came  from  a  sincere  desire  to  exalt  God  in  their  minds  at  their 
own  expense.  But  when  other  men  took  them  at  their  word, 
when  King  Charles  and  Laud  and  Claverhouse  treated  them 
as  though  they  were  worms  of  the  dust,  these  others  found  them 
and  they  found  themselves  by  no  means  ready  to  be  trampled 
on.  Not  to  the  Puritans,  despite  their  language,  had  God  given 
the  spirit  of  fear,  nor  to  the  Covenanters,  nor  to  the  Huguenots, 
nor  to  the  Herrnhuters,  nor  to  any  others  who  have  learned 
in  the  school  of  Christ  to  be  at  once  humble  and  proud.  True 
religion  in  subduing  men  does  not  crush  them.  There  is  no 
terrorism  in  the  Gospel.  Fear  crouches  under  the  sceptre  of 
the  law,  beneath  the  sheltering  wings  of  the  Gospel  it  has  no 
abiding  place.  There  is  a  divine  message  of  fear  to  men;  but 


184  THE   VERY  ELECT 

it  is  to  men  who  will  not  have  this  man  to  reign  over  them,  this 
man  whose  yoke  is  easy  and  whose  burden  is  light.  Fear 
unfits  men  for  receiving  the  Gospel.  It  is  selfish,  suspicious, 
resentful.  Not  until  it  has  been  replaced  by  faith,  which  is 
open-hearted,  sympathetic,  self -abandoning,  can  the  Chris- 
tian life  begin.  When  the  timorous  soul,  cowering  in  the 
shadow  of  its  guilt  cries  out,  "What  must  I  do  to  be  saved?" 
the  first  thing  the  Gospel  does  for  him  is  to  hearten  him,  to 
give  him  a  manly  confidence,  not  in  himself  but  in  another 
braver  and  stronger  than  he,  his  leader  and  captain:  " Believe 
on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  thou  shalt  be  saved."  So  it 
was  with  Paul  himself.  When  he  fell  down  trembling  and 
astonished  and  cried  out  in  his  terror,  the  word  came  to  him, 
"  Rise  and  stand  upon  thy  feet."  Why  should  a  man  be  grovel- 
ing in  the  earth?  You  are  a  man  and  no  worm.  Up  and  be 
a  man  and  go  and  do  a  man's  work. 

And  so  all  through  the  Scriptures  we  find  religion  represented 
as  a  deliverance  from  fear,  from  the  fear  of  man  which  bringeth 
a  snare,  from  the  fear  of  death,  which  subjects  to  bondage, 
from  a  fearful  looking-for  of  judgment  and  fiery  indignation 
which  blasts  hope  in  the  soul  and  makes  the  soul  itself  dwindle 
into  abject  servility.  What  spectacles  has  a  perverted  Chris- 
tianity exhibited  to  the  world  of  whole  peoples  kept  in  a  low 
condition  of  vitality  by  the  depressing  influences  of  a  religion, 
which  appealing  only  to  fear,  has  fostered  a  timid,  dependent, 
childish  character!  where  religious  crusades,  and  autos  da 
fe"  and  grottoes  of  the  damned  are  the  most  conspicuous  public 
expressions  of  the  spirit  of  religion,  there  be  sure  to  find  a 
people  who,  though  naturally  high-spirited,  have  been  so  re- 
duced in  their  intellectual  and  moral  tone  that  they  are  the 
easy  victims  of  both  secular  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny.  Surely 
that  is  a  spurious  religion  which,  entering  into  a  soul  full  of 
daring  and  enthusiasm,  rushing  with  eagerness  into  the  battle 
of  life,  prompts  it  to  halt  and  strike  its  colors  and  go  softly 
and  sue  for  peace  and  live  thenceforward  an  underling!  Surely 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  185 

there  is  more  in  the  Christian  religion  than  is  dreamed  of  by 
those  who  laud  it  mainly  for  restraining  hot  tempers,  and 
making  youths  sober  and  men  sedate  and  women  obedient 
and  keeping  society  within  the  due  bounds  of  law  and  order. 
The  essence  of  religion  is  not  restraint;  the  ultimate  aim  of 
Christianity  is  not  like  that  of  Buddhism,  equilibrium  and  re- 
pose; God  hath  not  given  us  the  spirit  of  fear. 

But  of  Power.  God  hath  given  us  the  spirit  of  Power. 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  stands  for  power,  as  well  as  for  meekness 
and  love.  It  is  a  total  and  fatal  misconception  of  him  which 
keeps  this  quality  in  the  background.  The  very  gentleness 
with  which  he  exercised  his  power  is  an  evidence  of  its  might. 
Not  as  the  warrior  with  battles  and  confused  noise  and  gar- 
ments rolled  in  blood  does  he  assert  his  sway  over  men  and 
society,  but  as  light  and  gravitation  pervade  and  subdue  all 
things  throughout  the  universe.  It  was  a  mark  of  Jewish 
stupidity  and  narrowness  to  demand  power  in  the  Messiah 
and  not  be  able  to  see  it.  No  less  is  it  a  mark  of  gentile  stu- 
pidity in  our  times  to  make  the  same  mistake.  Ask  the  secular 
mind  of  the  day  whether  it  gets  a  stronger  impression  of  mere 
power  from  Jesus  of  Nazareth  or  from  Julius  Caesar,  for  ex- 
ample, who  is  just  now  the  world's  favorite  hero,  and  how  many 
would  confess  that  the  imperial  qualities  of  the  Caesar  are  the 
more  striking.  And  yet  take  Caesar  at  the  highest  estimate 
given  of  him  and  how  does  the  mere  human  Jesus  tower 
above  him  in  all  imperial  and  heroic  attributes!  How  much 
larger  his  plans,  how  much  ampler  his  resources,  how  much 
more  direct  and  steady  his  movement  toward  the  accomplish- 
ment of  his  purposes!  His  power  was  not  like  that  of  the 
Caesars,  Napoleons  and  Bismarcks,  artificially  built  up,  de- 
pendent on  the  uncertainties  of  a  host  of  capricious  wills,  and 
in  the  last  resort  on  physical  force  which  he  disdained;  it  was 
centered  in  himself  and  went  forth  from  himself  as  virtue  went 
forth  to  heal  the  sick.  Not  only  was  there  power  in  his  word, 
commanding  wind  and  sea,  diseases  and  devils  and  even 


186  THE  VERY  ELECT 

death  itself;  not  only  in  his  frown,  by  one  look  sending  men 
backward  till  they  fell  to  the  ground;  not  only  in  his  denuncia- 
tion visited  so  heavily  on  the  imperious  Pharisees  that  they 
ran  the  risk  of  being  stoned  by  the  people;  there  was  power 
above  all  in  his  gentleness,  in  his  love,  his  blessing.  Such  love 
as  his  can  come  only  from  a  nature  divinely  strong.  Would 
you  measure  his  compassion  for  the  sinner?  You  must  first 
measure  his  resentment  against  sin.  As  is  his  indignation,  so 
is  his  forgiveness.  When  the  Son  of  man  shall  come  in  his 
glory  to  judgment,  he  will  not  show  forth  more  power  than 
when  he  bowed  his  head  on  Calvary.  Martyrdom,  forsooth, 
some  have  called  it.  Nay,  it  was  no  martyrdom.  "I  have 
power,"  said  he,  "to  lay  down  my  life;  no  man  taketh  it  from 
me,  but  I  lay  it  down  of  myself."  "Power  to  lay  down  his 
life!"  That  is  the  power  we  find  it  so  hard  to  understand. 
The  Jews  did  not  understand  it  and  rejected  their  Messiah. 
The  Romans  did  not  understand  it,  and  thought  the  religion 
that  embodied  it  a  craven  thing,  unworthy  of  the  lords  of  the 
earth.  Some  modern  theologians  do  not  understand  it,  and 
think  that  the  only  religion  of  power  is  a  religion  that  can 
terrify.  Other  theologians  do  not  understand  it,  and  weep 
over  so  tragic  an  end  to  so  gentle  a  life  and  miss  all  the  meaning 
of  the  death.  And  so  Christ  is,  as  at  first,  misunderstood  and 
rejected  by  many,  because  they  do  not  feel  the  power  of  that 
life  and  that  death. 

But  to  those  who  truly  know  Christ  and  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  him,  God  hath  given  power — the  power,  first,  which  comes 
from  Conviction.  True  religion  is  not  a  mere  sentiment,  a 
mood  of  the  fancy,  a  leaping  up  of  the  heart  when  one  beholds 
a  rainbow  in  the  sky,  a  pensive  feeling  when  one  hears  the  winds 
sigh  or  sees  the  leaves  fall,  the  religion  of  the  swallow  and  the 
lamb.  It  is  a  deep  conviction  of  his  whole  soul,  to  which  all 
his  faculties  bring  their  share,  and  in  which  they  all  harmo- 
niously and  joyfully  consent.  Few  of  us  know  the  power  there 
is  in  a  conviction,  because  few  of  us  have  convictions  of  our 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  187 

own.  One  can  begin  the  Christian  life  and  go  a  little  way 
in  it  by  following  the  convictions  of  others,  of  mother,  of  father, 
of  pastor,  of  catechism,  of  church;  but  he  cannot  go  far,  he 
cannot  be  a  man  of  power,  until  he  reach  convictions  of  his 
own.  They  may  coincide  with  the  convictions  of  millions  who 
have  gone  before  him;  they  must  do  so  hi  the  main;  but  they 
are  his  own,  the  result  of  processes  that  have  gone  on  in  his 
own  being,  the  conclusions  to  which  every  element  in  his  nature 
holds  itself  pledged.  The  mightiest  force  hi  this  world  is 
such  a  conviction.  One  man  thinks  and  thinks  until  he  be- 
comes convinced  that  there  is  a  continent  somewhere  to  the 
west;  another  that  a  great  wrong  ought  to  be  righted,  and 
if  not  by  others,  then  by  him;  and  so  a  conviction  in  a  solitary 
mind  changes  the  course  of  human  history.  Especially  when 
a  man  gets  a  religious  conviction,  let  other  men  beware,  for 
something  will  surely  come  to  pass.  The  son  of  a  poor  miner 
becomes  convinced  of  a  great  religious  truth  which  the  church 
had  for  ages  obscured,  so  convinced  of  it  that  he  dared  tell 
the  Emperor  and  the  council  that  he  must  believe  and  preach 
it,  and  could  not  otherwise,  God  help  him,  and  that  convic- 
tion made  the  successor  of  the  Gregories  and  the  Innocents, 
of  those  to  whom  kings  had  sued  in  vain  for  mercy  and  before 
whom  a  barefoot  Emperor  in  the  snow  had  humbled  the  loft- 
iest head  in  Europe,  give  up  the  fairest  half  of  his  patrimony, 
never  to  be  recovered.  Compare  the  man  who  has  a  religious 
conviction  with  the  man  who  has  a  religious  doubt.  Here 
is  a  man  who  thinks  he  has  discovered  some  doubts  about 
Christianity  that  are  eminently  fine.  Does  for  he  their  sake 
make  a  martyr  of  himself?  Or  does  he  enrich  himself  by  selling 
his  indulgences?  Here  is  another  man  who  has  exhausted 
the  resources  of  a  subtle  Gallic  intellect  in  explaining  away  the 
grandest  and  most  profound  of  all  human  lives  into  "a  sweet 
Galilean  vision/'  which  infidel  Paris,  eager  for  a  new  sensa- 
tion, buys  by  the  thousand,  while  he  luxuriates  on  the  proceeds 
in  a  charming  rural  villa.  But  let  one  come  under  the  power 


188  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  a  religious  conviction,  and  it  drives  Peter  the  Hermit  as 
by  a  frenzy  all  over  Europe  to  preach  the  crusades;  gives 
Abelard  a  voice  so  full  of  energy  that  he  calls  young  men  by 
thousands  to  his  university;  sends  John  Howard  and  Eliza- 
beth Fry  to  relieve  the  suffering  in  prisons  and  Chalmers 
and  Guthrie  to  teach  the  poor  and  save  the  lost  in  the  slums 
of  great  cities;  and  impels  Brainerd  and  Carey,  Moffat  and 
Livingston  amid  savages  and  pariahs,  that  they  may  carry 
to  degraded  and  dying  races  the  reviving  and  saving  power 
of  the  gospel  of  the  grace  of  God. 

The  Christian  has  also  the  power  that  comes  from  Faith. 
He  has  faith  in  his  convictions  and  is  willing  to  stake  all  on 
their  truth.  But  he  has  also  faith  in  his  faith.  He  believes 
in  God ;  he  believes  also  in  Jesus  Christ ;  he  believes  that  God 
through  Christ  has  wrought  great  things  for  him  and  put 
great  possibilities  within  his  reach,  and  he  believes  in  his 
belief.  He  trusts  it.  He  embarks  upon  it  into  great  enter- 
prises full  of  unknown  perils.  He  cannot  see  far  forward  into 
the  unrevealed;  but  he  does  not,  like  the  timid  Greek  mariner, 
merely  skirt  the  shore  and  creep  from  point  to  point,  and  from 
island  to  island,  from  one  sensuous  and  material  fact  to  another, 
doubting  of  everything  beyond  the  present  horizon.  He 
launches  boldly  out  upon  the  promises  of  God,  believing  that 
new  continents  of  truth  and  new  climates  of  the  divine  love 
await  him  beyond  the  farthest  ken  of  his  intellect.  In  nothing 
does  the  best  modern  character  more  show  its  superiority  over 
the  best  pagan  character  than  in  the  boldness  and  power  that 
come  from  faith.  The  Greek  intellect  was  credulous,  but 
faithless.  Its  most  popular  sect  of  philosophers  doubted 
whether  there  is  any  such  thing  as  absolute  truth  apart  from 
our  conceptions  of  it.  The  Greek  lacked,  therefore,  that  which 
Dr.  Arnold  used  to  insist  on  as  the  essential  basis  of  character, 
moral  earnestness.  The  Roman  was  serious  enough  but  was 
enslaved  by  the  authority  of  the  mere  practical  judgment. 
Both  were  incapable  of  faith;  hence  both  were  open  to  super- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  189 

stitious  fear ;  cowed  before  realities  which  they  could  not  think 
their  way  through :  brave  but  not  courageous,  for  courage  is  born 
of  faith.  For  feats  of  arms,  for  enterprises  distant  and  peril- 
ous they  had  daring  enough,  if  some  bird  or  beast  or  meteor 
or  noise  did  not  create  a  panic  among  them ;  for  in  the  presence 
of  all  things  invisible  they  had  the  spirit  of  fear  and  not  of 
power.  But  the  modern  mind  having  received  through  the 
life  and  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  a  view  of  the 
invisible  world  which  removes  all  its  terror  and  peoples  it 
with  grandest  possibilities,  feels  the  power  of  the  world  to 
come  in  all  the  branches  and  fibres  of  its  life,  not  only  in  its 
religious  aspirations  and  activities,  but  in  its  intellectual 
opinions,  its  political  and  social  systems,  its  material  arts  and 
enterprises.  The  great  system  of  credit,  individual,  corporate 
and  national,  on  which  three-fourths  of  the  enterprise  of  the 
world  is  dependent,  is  at  once  an  evidence  and  an  outgrowth 
of  the  principle  of  faith  which  has  its  origin  in  the  religion  of 
Christ.  And  to  go  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  exempli- 
fication of  faith,  compare  the  lyrics  of  the  Greek  tragedy  in 
which  death  and  the  hereafter  are  alluded  to,  with  the  songs 
of  a  Christian  hymn-book;  those,  sad,  querulous,  dispiriting; 
these,  cheerful,  hopeful,  exultant.  How  could  it  be  but  that 
that  black  uncertainty  should  throw  a  shadow  over  life  under 
which  courage  should  fail  and  enterprise  should  lose  its  pith 
and  moment?  How  can  it  be  but  that  the  glory  that  is  yet 
to  be  revealed  to  the  Christian  should  embolden  him  to  great 
endeavors  here  while  he  is  waiting  for  greater  things  beyond? 

The  Christian  has  furthermore  the  power  that  comes  from 
Love.  " There  is  no  fear,"  says  another  strong  Apostle, 
pre-eminently  strong  in  love,  as  Paul  was  in  conviction  and 
faith,  " there  is  no  fear  in  love;  perfect  love  casteth  out  fear; 
he  that  feareth  is  not  made  perfect  in  love."  The  man  who 
is  full  of  the  love  of  God  is  a  bold,  strong,  valiant  man.  As 
in  a  lower  sphere  the  love  of  wife  and  children,  of  home  and 
country,  enlarges  a  man's  nature  and  gives  him  worth  and 


190  THE  VERY  ELECT 

potency  in  the  State,  so  in  the  highest  sphere,  the  love  of  God 
as  manifested  in  Christ  and  the  love  of  all  those  for  whom 
Christ  died,  imparts  to  the  true  Christian  character,  breadth, 
magnanimity,  energy.  And  it  is  the  special  and  distinguish- 
ing feature  of  Christianity  that  it  elevates,  dignifies,  and  em- 
phasises beyond  all  other  qualities,  this  one  quality  of  love. 
A  powerful  writer  of  our  time  seeking  an  expression  that  should 
be  energetic  enough  to  set  forth  such  love  as  Christ  would  in- 
spire in  his  followers,  calls  it  an  enthusiasm,  an  enthusiasm  for 
Christ,  an  enthusiasm  for  humanity,  by  which  he  means  love 
raised  to  the  height  of  a  passion.  For  as  a  man  in  a  passion 
is  momentarily  strong  by  gathering  into  a  sudden  act  the  vital 
energy  of  weeks  and  months  to  come,  so  the  Christian,  does 
not  borrow  from  himself  but  receives  from  an  inexhaustible 
divine  source  the  energy  which  exalts  his  affection  to  an  inten- 
sity above  his  mere  nature,  and  makes  impossibilities  easy 
to  him.  Whence  came  the  energy  that  sustained  the  perse- 
cuted saints  of  all  ages,  "poor  weak  women"  some  of  them,  as 
history  called  them?  Whence  came  the  greater  devotion  that 
has  sent  other  "weak  women"  into  hovels  where  the  poor  lay 
dying,  and  into  camps  feculent  with  disease  and  hospitals 
reeking  with  pestilence? 

At  the  very  height  and  flowering  of  Greek  civilization  in  the 
time  of  Pericles,  a  plague  fell  upon  the  city  of  Athens.  Then 
came  a  trial  of  manhood  more  searching  than  any  contest  at 
Platsea  or  Salamis,  and  Greek  valor  quailed  before  it,  a  craven 
and  dishonored  thing.  It  fled  from  the  couch  of  the  sick;  it 
did  not  know  how  to  die  in  doing  what  it  could  for  the  suffer- 
ing, were  that  little  or  much,  but  left  even  the  nearest  and 
dearest  to  die,  as  the  historian  says,  unattended  and  solitary, 
like  sheep.  Now  turn  forward  the  pages  of  history  and  read 
what  Christian  heroism  did  when  the  pestilence  desolated 
Alexandria  and  Carthage  and  Antioch  after  Christ's  spirit 
had  been  for  two  centuries  working  in  the  minds  of  men.  The 
bishops,  we  are  told,  called  together  their  flocks,  reminded  them 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  191 

of  Christ's  precepts  to  love  one  another,  and  to  love  their  ene- 
mies and  to  minister  to  the  sick  for  Christ's  sake;  and  that  all- 
powerful  appeal  prevailed.  Christian  and  pagan,  friend  and 
persecutor,  they  tended  alike,  dying  often  in  the  service  but 
glad  to  serve  by  their  death.  And  so  all  through  the  Christian 
ages,  Christian  character  has  always  been  attended  by  Chris- 
tian heroism,  in  man  and  in  woman.  Let  the  ancient  civiliza- 
tions or  any  of  the  non-Christian  humanities  bring  forward  their 
best  examples  of  heroic  daring,  and  we  will  shame  them  into 
silence  by  the  unostentatious  and  untrumpeted  act  of  some 
"poor  weak  woman,"  or  some  humble  Moravian  missionary, 
who  did  it  in  the  simplicity  of  their  hearts  and  for  the  love  of 
Christ,  and  who  at  the  judgment  day  will  wonder  and  blush 
when  they  try  to  remember  what  they  have  done,  and  when 
they  did  it,  that  such  acclaims  should  greet  their  entrance 
into  heaven. 

In  view  of  this  attempted  portraiture  of  the  true  Christian 
spirit,  as  a  spirit  of  power,  it  becomes  us  to  say,  though  it  be 
superfluous  to  say  it,  that  for  most  of  us  it  is  in  large  part 
an  unrealized  ideal.  Not  wholly  so.  Not  in  vain  has  this 
vital  and  vitalizing  energy  been  working  in  the  general  Chris- 
tian mind  for  eighteen  centuries.  Not  only  is  historic  Chris- 
tianity rich  in  individual  heroes,  but  the  aggregate  available 
energy  of  Christendom  is  nothing  less  than  vast,  and  is  steadily 
increasing.  But  the  pertinency  of  this  theme  at  this  time  lies 
in  the  need  of  reasserting  the  claims  of  the  strong  manly 
and  womanly  virtues  to  a  foremost  place  in  the  Christian 
conception  of  character.  The  response  which  Mr.  Thomas 
Hughes's  tract  on  the  " Manliness  of  Christ"  has  awakened, 
in  spite  of  the  slight  shock  occasioned  by  its  title,  reveals  a 
conviction  in  the  Christian  mind  that  the  word  was  needed  and 
timely.  We  are  today,  to  some  extent,  in  the  same  condition 
as  Paul  was.  Inasmuch  as  there  are  insinuations  to  the  con- 
trary, we  too  assert  with  some  warmth,  God  has  not  given  us 
the  spirit  of  fear  but  of  power.  If  it  is  charged  upon  the  Chris- 


192  THE  VERY  ELECT 

tianity  of  the  day  that  it  is  afflicted  with  intellectual  timidity; 
that  it  shrinks  from  an  encounter  with  science  in  the  open 
field;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  charged  upon  Christianity 
that  it  has  lost  something  of  its  old-time  moral  fibre  and  hardi- 
hood, that  it  preaches  a  soft  and  succulent  gospel,  that  has  no 
place  for  resentment  and  indignation  and  the  holiness  that 
cannot  look  upon  sin,  we  may  rebut  the  charges  as  well  as  we 
can  on  the  score  of  facts,  but  we  may  not  in  the  least  degree 
challenge  the  standard  to  which  our  Christianity  is  brought. 

Let  us  learn  from  our  enemies,  it  we  have  not  learned  else- 
where, that  a  timorous,  harmless,  indulgent  Christianity  is 
not  the  Christianity  of  Christ.  The  spirit  which  God  has  given 
us  is  the  spirit  of  power;  if  we  have  gone  and  taken  to  ourselves 
any  meaner  spirit,  that  spirit  is  not  of  God.  If  a  young  man 
thinks  to  make  his  religious  life  blameless,  but  his  secular  life 
strenuous;  if  he  thinks  to  put  into  his  religion  all  his  sacred 
musings  and  his  fine  Sunday  feelings,  but  into  his  business 
all  his  warmth  of  purpose  and  energy  of  action,  let  him  know 
that  he  does  not  intend  to  be  religious  at  all  after  the  Christian 
idea  of  religion.  To  be  a  devotee  after  the  pagan  sort,  is  to 
loiter  about  shrines  and  images  and  sacred  groves,  to  breathe 
the  fetid  odors  of  decaying  relics,  to  shrivel  up  one's  vitality 
in  caves  and  on  pillars.  To  be  devout  after  a  Christian  sort 
is  to  be  strenuous  in  prayer  and  then  strenuous  in  the  action 
which  in  part  fulfils  your  prayer,  or,  if  need  be,  not  stopping  to 
pray,  pray  as  you  run,  to  be  like  those  angels  that  excel  in 
strength,  that  do  his  commandments,  listening  with  upturned 
faces  to  catch  the  first  word  of  his  voice  and  then  posting  over 
land  and  ocean  without  rest.  Listen  not  to  the  voices  which 
say,  "It  is  good  to  be  here  on  the  mountain  top  of  contempla- 
tion and  ecstacy,  let  us  make  tabernacles  and  abide  in  this  se- 
rene, spiritual  air."  Such  wist  not  what  they  say.  It  is  not  good 
for  you,  not  good  for  others,  that  you  abide  there.  Down 
below,  in  the  world  of  reality,  there  are  hard  but  necessary 
duties  to  do,  evil  spirits  to  be  cast  out,  doubting  disciples  to 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  193 

be  strengthened,  Pharisees  to  be  encountered,  hardship,  per- 
secution, ignominy  to  be  undergone,  that  the  truth  may  be 
lived  and  preached  and  made  to  conquer.  As  was  Christ, 
so  are  we  in  the  world.  If  we  would  reign  with  him  we  must 
fight  with  him.  Blessed,  truly,  are  the  meek;  for  they  shall 
inherit  the  earth.  But  there  is  a  greater  blessing  for  him  that 
overcometh,  that  he  shall  sit  with  Christ  on  his  throne,  even 
as  he  overcame  and  is  set  down  with  the  Father  on  his  throne. 

Young  Friends  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

I  hope  that  you  do  not  regard  this  as  a  ceremony  of  leave- 
taking.  Speaking  for  all  your  instructors,  I  can  give  you  our 
hearty  good-bye.  God  be  with  you,  now  and  always;  but  that 
does  not  mean  that  the  college  and  you  are  going  to  part.  You 
are  to  be  graduated  not  from,  but  in  the  University.  Your 
first  degree  instead  of  separating  you  from  this  academic  family 
admits  you  more  fully  within  it.  Graduation  means  permis- 
sion to  share  the  recognitions,  the  fellowship,  the  dignities  of  a 
university,  or  society  of  scholars.  After  a  long  and  severe  no- 
vitiate, you  are  about  to  be  admitted  into  the  guild  of  scholars 
which  has  its  local  habitation  hi  this  University.  Aliens 
elsewhere,  you  will  always  have  here  your  intellectual  home, 
your  inalienable,  untransferable  domicile.  And  instead  of 
severing  your  intellectual  relations  with  us,  I  trust  that  you 
will  find  your  relations  with  us  and  our  successors  only  more 
free  and  intimate,  because  you  will  have  passed  from  the  con- 
dition of  pupilage  to  that  of  fellowship.  This  institution 
hopes  and  expects  to  render  to  you  many  services  in  the  future; 
it  also  expects  to  receive  from  you  a  large  return  of  affection, 
gratitude  and  support.  Let  us  then  dismiss  the  false  notion 
that  those  who  are  through  college  are  through  with  the  col- 
lege, and  understand  that  the  tie  between  a  laureate  student 
and  his  university  is  one  of  maternal  affection  and  service  till 
death  them  do  part. 

13 


194  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Let  me  press  upon  your  thoughtful  consideration  the  sig- 
nificant fact  that  you  have  had  your  intellectual  nursery, 
and  will  hereafter  have  your  intellectual  home  in  a  Christian 
institution  of  learning.  Not  that  this  college  sets  up  the  claim 
of  being  more  Christian  than  other  colleges,  but  that  all  our 
colleges  are  Christian  institutions.  They  are  a  genuine 
offshoot  of  Christianity;  they  spring  from  Christian  ideas; 
just  as  naturally  as  certain  plants  and  flowers  accompany 
civilization  round  the  world,  do  the  common  law,  and  the  com- 
mon school  and  the  college  go  with  Christianity.  Whether 
or  not  you  have  stopped  to  think  of  it,  Christian  ideas  have 
pervaded  your  instruction  all  along;  Christian  truth  has  been 
incorporated  into  the  structure  and  growth  of  your  minds  all 
these  years.  If  unhappily  any  of  you  should  hereafter  repu- 
diate or  by  your  lives  dishonor  the  Christian  faith  or  any  vital 
part  of  it,  you  will  be  untrue  to  the  teachings,  and  will  bring 
reproach  upon  the  fair  name  of  your  college.  And  in  so  far 
as  you  carry  out  into  life,  into  good  and  noble  deeds,  the  Chris- 
tian ideas  here  commended  to  you,  you  will  justify  the  confi- 
dence which  the  University  places  in  you  when  it  certifies 
to  all  the  world  that  you  are  worthy  to  take  your  first  degree 
in  Christian  learning. 

There  is  a  great  work  to  be  done  for  the  world  which  you 
because  you  are  scholars,  must  take  your  share  in  doing.  You 
will  have  no  monopoly  of  honorable  places;  do  not  cherish  the 
conceit  that  you  ought  to  have.  But  there  is  a  kind  of  hon- 
orable work,  as  good  as  the  best,  which  naturally  falls  to  you, 
in  the  professions,  the  schools,  the  industries.  To  enter  upon 
that  work  with  well-trained  powers  is  the  best  opportunity 
this  life  has  to  offer.  To  do  a  good  work  well  is  the  glory  of 
living.  To  go  into  active  life,  and  to  go  through  life,  not 
with  a  timorous,  listless,  feeble  spirit,  but  with  the  spirit  of 
power,  the  power  that  comes  from  conviction,  from  faith,  from 
love,  is  the  best  way  to  answer  the  question,  Is  life  worth 
living?  Twenty  persons  going  with  this  spirit  into  the  pro- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  POWER  195 

fessions,  industries,  churches,  homes,  can  not  only  make 
themselves  and  their  class  and  their  college  famous,  but  what 
is  better,  they  can  do  much  for  the  honor  of  good  learning, 
for  the  increase  of  true  religion,  for  the  advancement  of  man- 
kind and  for  the  glory  of  Christ.  And  so,  reminding  you  once 
more  of  the  perpetual  tie  which  binds  you  to  this  University, 
its  indefeasible  claim  upon  your  affection  and  service,  and  its 
inalienable  mother-interest  in  all  your  fortunes,  we  bid  you 
hail  and  welcome.  God  be  with  you  now  and  always. 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST 

Let  this  mind  be  in  you,  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus:  who,  being  in 
the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be  equal  with  God:  but  made 
himself  of  no  reputation,  and  took  upon  him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  was 
made  in  the  likeness  of  men:  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled 
himself,  and  became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross. 
Wherefore  God  also  hath  highly  exalted  him,  and  given  him  a  name  which 
is  above  every  name.  Philippians  ii:  5-9- 

IF  EVER  there  was  a  being  who  might  with  good  reason  insist 
on  his  rights,  it  might  seem  that  that  being  was  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Son  of  God.  It  might  even  seem  that  he  was  under 
obligation  to  do  so.  A  being  of  exalted  rank  has  duties  to 
fulfil  with  respect  to  that  rank.  He  owes  it  to  himself  and 
possibly  to  others  not  to  suffer  his  dignity  to  be  lowered.  A 
king  may  not  waive  his  kingship.  Dante  has  put  eternal 
infamy  on  one  who  committed  "the  great  refusal/'  who 
surrendered  a  great  prize  and  a  great  opportunity;  and  the 
world  has  approved  the  doom  and  the  phrase.  This  was 
precisely  the  conception  the  Jews  had  of  the  Messiah;  an 
exalted  being  who  would  assert  himself  and  insist  upon  his 
rights.  To  have  power  and  not  use  it;  to  be  a  subject,  almost 
a  beggar,  when  he  might  have  been  a  king :  this  was  something 
so  preposterous  that  they  grew  frantic  in  thinking  of  it.  So 
it  was  also  with  the  Roman.  Pilate  meant  at  once  to  mock 
Jesus  and  to  express  his  contempt  for  the  Jews  when  he  said, 
"Shall  I  crucify  your  king?"  And  they  meant  to  inform 
Pilate  that  they  knew  as  well  as  any  Roman  what  becomes  a 
king,  when  they  replied,  "We  have  no  king  but  Caesar.'7 

But  the  Son  of  God,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  did  not  think 
that  equality  with  God  was  a  thing  to  be  grasped  at  as  a  prize. 
He  did  not  think  it  incumbent  on  him  to  maintain  his  dignity 
and  assert  his  rights.  He  waived  his  kingship.  He  committed 

196 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  197 

a  "great  refusal."  He  humbled  himself  and  became  obedient 
unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross.  He,  a  sovereign, 
lowered  himself  to  be  a  subject;  he,  incapable  of  the  smallest 
wrong,  submitted  to  the  ignominy  of  a  malefactor;  he,  the 
Lord  of  Life,  yielded  himself  to  death.  He  abandoned 
apparently  every  right  he  had.  In  the  estimate  of  both  Jew 
and  Roman  he  committed  the  last  act  of  baseness:  he  sub- 
mitted to  indignity,  contumely,  infamy,  without  protest  or 
resentment. 

The  question  therefore  comes  to  us  as  it  came  to  the  Jews 
and  the  Romans.  How  can  an  exalted  being  waive  all  his 
rights  and  maintain  his  true  position  and  character?  How 
can  a  king  who  has  abdicated,  a  potentate  who  has  committed 
a  great  refusal,  a  reformer  who  has  courted  ignominious  dis- 
aster, hope  to  establish  his  pretensions,  how  expect  even  to 
escape  the  imputation  of  weakness  and  failure? 

The  answer  to  this  is  very  simple;  the  child  can  give  it  out 
of  his  New  Testament.  But  it  is,  after  all,  one  of  the  hidden 
things  of  Christ's  gospel,  hidden  from  the  wise  and  prudent; 
the  great  secret;  the  most  difficult,  the  divinest  lesson  of  all. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  grasping  at  one's  right  and  getting  it, 
too,  and  being  the  loser  thereby.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
surrendering  one's  right  and  being  the  gainer  thereby.  There 
is  dignity  in  waiving  one's  dignity  for  the  sake  of  a  great  cause. 
There  is  a  glory  in  suffering  for  others,  beyond  that  of  dis- 
playing one's  glory  to  others.  When  a  king  abdicates  for  the 
good  of  his  subjects,  history  uncovers  to  him  with  respect. 
We  in  this  country  have  known  of  one  who  refused  to  be  a 
king.  Washington  committed  a  great  refusal,  and  behold 
what  a  throne  he  occupies  in  the  eyes  not  of  his  countrymen 
only  but  of  mankind!  If  Pope  Celestine  had  surrendered  the 
triple  crown  that  Christendom  might  have  some  great  advan- 
tage thereby,  Dante  would  have  set  him  upon  a  high  seat  in 
Paradise.  The  Son  of  God  waived  his  own  right  that  he  might 
obtain  rights  for  others.  He  left  his  own  throne  that  he  might 


198  THE  VERY  ELECT 

make  us  kings  and  priests  unto  God.  He  was  a  man  of  sorrows 
that  we  might  rejoice  evermore.  He  suffered  death  that  we 
might  have  eternal  life.  He  refrained  from  insisting  on  his 
rights  that  those  who  had  no  rights  whatever  might  have  the 
supreme  right  to  the  tree  of  life,  and  to  enter  in  by  the  gate  into 
the  City  of  God. 

But  it  is  also  to  be  remembered  that  all  this  was  not  by 
Christ's  mere  sufferance,  but  by  his  choice.  In  no  sense,  and 
in  no  particular  of  his  plan,  did  he  suffer  defeat.  His  loss  and 
shame  were  real,  not  theatrical;  he  literally  and  truly  hun- 
gered and  wept  and  suffered  and  died.  But  in  it  all  he  had 
his  own  will  and  wrought  out  his  own  sovereign  purpose. 
When  with  dusty  feet  he  trod  the  streets  and  fields  of  Galilee, 
when  he  was  thrust  from  the  precipice  at  Nazareth,  when  his 
feet  and  hands  were  nailed  to  the  cross,  he  was  in  all  things 
going  steadily  onward  in  the  work  which  he  had  undertaken. 
His  very  death  was  a  triumph.  If  their  eyes  could  have  been 
opened  to  see  the  reality  of  things,  those  who  stood  on  Calvary 
saw  the  divinest  spectacle  this  earth  has  ever  seen  or  can  see. 
Not  when  he  comes  in  his  glory  with  all  the  holy  angels  and 
sits  upon  the  throne  of  his  glory,  will  his  real  glory  be  greater 
than  when  he  hung  upon  the  cross.  What  the  centurion  said, 
constrained  by  that  spectacle,  all  the  world  constrained  by 
the  same  spectacle  will  one  day  echo,  "  Truly  this  was  the 
Son  of  God."  "Wherefore,"  says  the  apostle, — as  though 
he  would  say,  not  by  an  arbitrary  decree  but  by  the  necessary 
operation  of  moral  forces, — "Wherefore  God  also  hath  highly 
exalted  him  and  given  him  a  name  that  is  above  every  name." 
God  hath  forever  established,  and  Christ  hath  to  all  times  and 
all  worlds  declared,  that  the  way  to  excellency  in  name,  in 
character,  in  power,  in  the  affections  of  moral  beings  is  not 
by  self-assertion;  is  not  by  self-denial,  not  by  insisting  on  one's 
rights,  but  by  holding  those  rights  in  subserviency  to  the 
higher  good. 

It  is  the  instinct  of  nature  to  assert  self.     This  is  the  univer- 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  199 

sal  instinct  of  brutes.  When  we  see  a  dog  or  an  elephant 
forego  something  for  the  sake  of  another,  we  recognize  the 
modification  the  brute  nature  has  undergone  by  contact  with 
the  human.  Man  in  his  primitive  state  is  a  self-asserting 
animal.  He  may,  indeed,  descend  to  a  state  below  this  and 
cease  to  assert  himself.  To  submit  doggedly  to  wrong  is 
sign  of  a  low  moral  condition;  to  submit  contentedly,  of  a  still 
lower.  When  we  read  how  the  people  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  were  treated  by  the  nobles,  how  contemptuously, 
how  brutally,  and  how  long  they  submitted  without  retaliation; 
when  we  see  in  heathen  countries  still  whole  classes  and  races 
sunk  below  the  capacity  of  resentment,  we  see  what  an 
important  office  in  human  society  is  assigned  by  the  Creator 
to  this  primitive  instinct  of  self-assertion,  and  how  dangerous 
is  the  suppression  of  it.  One  of  the  first  and  most  beneficent 
effects  of  Christianity  upon  these  apathetic  races  is  to  rouse 
them  to  a  sense  of  their  rights  and  to  embolden  them  to  claim 
those  rights.  The  ever-vigilant  spirit  of  power,  both  secular 
and  spiritual,  stands  ready  to  take  advantage  of  the  slightest 
relaxation  of  this  sturdy  native  prerogative  of  all  men.  A 
foreigner  has  recently  told  us  that  of  all  people  in  the  world, 
we  are  in  danger  of  losing  certain  rights  in  default  of  insisting 
upon  them. 

But  all  this  belongs  to  the  lower,  the  primitive  life  of  man. 
For  the  substratum  of  character  it  is  necessary,  but  it  is  not 
the  material  out  of  which  character  itself  can  be  formed. 
The  extension  and  development  of  the  principle  of  self-asser- 
tion can  never  produce  the  true  life  of  the  individual  or  of 
society.  If  the  best  adjustment  of  social  human  life  comes  as 
the  result  of  a  mere  conflict  of  rights,  then  Hobbes  was  right, 
and  society  is  only  an  armed  neutrality.  But  both  history  and 
philosophy  assure  us  that  the  hope  for  human  well-being  lies 
not  in  that  direction.  The  individual  who  is  always  standing 
upon  his  rights,  insisting  upon  and  magnifying  what  society 
owes  to  him,  is  hardly  a  general  favorite.  Everybody  tires 


200  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  him,  dreads  him,  spurns  him.  Few  things  are  more  offensive 
than  a  certain  persistent  and  uproarious  selfishness  that  is 
forever  claiming  and  screeching  for  more,  more  for  one's  self, 
more  for  one's  class  or  sect  or  sex  or  profession.  And  when 
the  claim  is  still  further  enlarged,  when  the  rights  of  man  are 
made  emphatic  over  all  else  that  pertains  to  man,  over  his 
obligations,  and  responsibilities,  the  results  are  anything  but 
the  peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness.  To  found  society  on 
the  rights  of  man,  his  rights  only,  is  simply  to  incorporate  the 
principle  of  multiplied  self-assertion.  That  experiment  has 
been  tried,  and  its  various  phases  have  been  hate,  cruelty, 
bloodshed,  anarchy,  insurrections,  massacres,  the  reign  of 
terror,  military  despotism.  History  furnishes  no  single 
instance  of  a  community  beneficently  organized  upon  a  mere 
assertion  of  rights.  The  French  anarchists  were  fond  of 
justifying  themselves  by  appealing  to  the  American  Declara- 
tion of  Independence.  But  that  document  represented  the 
spirit  of  American  liberty  only  when  taken  in  connection  with 
the  profound  respect  for  law  and  the  deep  sense  of  religion 
which  formed  the  substance  of  the  American  character.  The 
movements  which  have  permanently  benefited  man  and 
society  have  sprung  from  a  different  spirit  from  that  of  self- 
assertion;  from  a  spirit  rather  of  concession,  of  self-sacrifice, 
of  ministration.  When  the  strong  have  been  willing  to  forego 
their  rights  in  order  to  aid  the  weak;  when  kings  have  yielded 
some  part  of  their  prerogative  to  the  people,  or  when  nobles 
have  lifted  up  their  standards  to  aid  the  people  against  tyrant 
kings,  when  parliaments  have  opened  wide  the  gates  of  hos- 
pitality to  strangers  fleeing  from  persecution  for  their  faith; 
when  for  the  cause  of  pure  religion,  gently  nurtured  men  and 
tender  women  have  braved  storms  and  exile  and  penury; 
when  a  rich,  prosperous,  self-sufficing  people  have  poured  out 
their  best  blood  to  redeem  not  their  kinsmen  but  an  alien 
race  from  slavery — these  are  the  acts,  these  the  methods  by 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  201 

which  the  real  dignity  of  men  is  exhibited,  and  social  insti- 
tutions are  established  on  a  sure  foundation. 

We  in  this  country — to  say  nothing  about  others — have 
been  living  too  long  in  the  primitive  stage  of  human  society. 
We  have  built  our  social  fabric  too  much  out  of  mere  assertion 
of  rights.  At  times  we  have  been  lifted  into  a  glorious  for- 
getfulness  of  our  selfishness,  but  have  soon  dropped  back  again 
into  the  old  ways.  Save  a,s  religion  modifies  the  temper  of 
our  people,  the  spirit  of  American  life  is  too  much  that  of 
individualism.  Every  man  is  for  himself.  Politically  we 
are  democratic:  socially  we  are  intensely  aristocratic.  The 
strongest  are  the  best.  A  profound  student  of  political 
society,  and  a  friendly  critic,  has  recently  written  of  us: 
"  There  has  hardly  ever  before  been  a  community  in  which 
the  weak  have  been  pushed  so  hopelessly  to  the  wall,  in  which 
those  who  have  succeeded  have  been  so  uniformly  the  strong, 
and  in  which  in  so  short  a  time  there  has  arisen  so  great  an 
inequality  of  private  fortune  and  domestic  luxury."  It  is  a 
startling  but  not  an  undeserved  indictment.  The  American 
ideal  of  a  man  is  of  one  who  can  most  effectually  assert  him- 
self. It  is  not  in  the  American  code  that  the  meek  shall 
inherit  the  earth.  A  certain  degree  of  insolence  pervades  all 
classes  among  us — the  poor  quite  as  much  as  the  rich.  This 
riot  of  insubordination,  disorder,  violence,  is  the  logical  out- 
come of  a  rampant  spirit  of  self-assertion.  So  long  as  the 
prime  and  main  thought  of  every  man,  rich  and  poor,  employer 
and  employed,  capitalist  and  wage-earner,  is  to  assert,  and  so, 
of  course,  to  magnify  and  exaggerate,  his  rights,  regardless  of 
all  obligations,  ministries  and  charities,  so  long  will  the  con- 
flict of  rights  be  bitter,  disastrous  and  interminable.  The 
solution  of  the  vexed  questions  of  the  day  is  to  approach  them 
in  a  wholly  different  spirit — the  mutual  spirit,  if  I  may  say  so, 
rather  than  the  self -asserting  spirit.  What  the  times  need  is 
not  so  much  a  new  Political  Economy  as  a  larger  infusion  of 


202  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Christianity  into  the  social  life  of  men.     Poets  love  to  sing  of 

a  time  when 

— none  was  for  a  party 
But  all  were  for  the  state, 
When  the  great  man  helped  the  poor 
And  the  poor  man  loved  the  great. 

But  though  there  never  was  such  a  time  in  the  past,  there 
will  be  in  the  future.  And  that  future  will  be  solely  the 
product  of  Christianity.  The  natural  selfish  instincts  of 
humanity  can  never  produce  it.  When  the  spirit  of  him  who 
did  not  insist  on  everything  he  might  have  grasped,  but 
waived  the  prize  in  the  interest  of  others: — when  his  spirit 
pervades  human  society,  then  labor  will  recognize  the  rights 
of  capital  and  employers  will  study  the  interest  of  the  employed : 
then  wealth  will  be  regarded  as  a  fund  to  be  administered  for 
the  thriftless  and  improvident  poor:  political  power  as  a  trust 
delegated  to  capable  hands  in  the  interest  of  the  weak:  knowl- 
edge as  a  deposit  of  bullion  to  be  paid  out  in  current  coin  to  the 
ignorant :  then  every  talent  and  gift  and  opportunity  bestowed 
upon  one  will  be  by  him  regarded  as  so  many  obligations  to 
benefit  and  serve  the  many.  A  profound  writer  has  pointed 
out  that  liberty  and  equality  are  incongruous — that  liberty 
generates  inequality.  But  in  the  Christian  state  the  inequality 
that  is  begotten  of  Christian  liberty  shall  mean  that  one  man 
has  greater  capacity  of  service  than  another,  and  that  he  who 
is  greatest  of  all  is  minister  of  all. 

But  the  application  of  this  principle  most  pertinent  to  the 
present  occasion  has  reference  to  the  determination  of  a 
career  in  life.  "Let  this  mind  be  in  you,"  says  the  apostle, 
addressing  us  one  by  one,  and  especially  those  who,  as  we  say, 
are  "making  up  their  mind"  for  life, — "let  this  mind  be  in 
you  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus."  Let  us  try  to  conceive 
— I  am  sure  we  may  do  it  without  irreverence — of  the  career, 
the  human  career,  of  Jesus.  Like  others,  throughout  his 
youth  and  young  manhood,  he  grew  in  wisdom  and  in  all 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  203 

human  capabilities.  He  came  by  degrees,  slowly  but  at  last 
fully  to  the  consciousness  of  his  powers.  Like  other  men  he 
had  to  decide — and  this  is  always  the  great  decision — what 
he  would  do  with  those  powers.  In  the  strange  and  mysterious 
story  of  the  temptation  in  the  wilderness  we  have  dimly  out- 
lined to  us  the  soul-searchings  through  which  he  came  to  his 
decision  and  determined  his  career.  There  was  on  the  one 
side,  the  career  of  one  to  whom  vast  possibilities  of  power,  of 
grandeur,  of  earthly  dominion,  were  open,  if  he  would  use  his 
powers  for  these  ends;  there  was  on  the  other  hand,  a  career 
of  obscurity,  of  lowly  service,  of  companionship  of  the  poor 
and  ignorant,  and  of  final  infamy  and  death,  but  resulting  in 
immeasurable  good  to  other  beings  and  to  the  interests  of 
righteousness  in  God's  universe.  There  was  in  short  the 
satanic  and  the  divine  view  of  human  life  set  before  him. 
And  he  made  his  choice — he  reaffirmed  the  choice  in  his 
human  career  which  he  had  before  made  when  he  chose  to 
forego  his  divine  dignity.  He  renounced  the  career  of  self- 
assertion  and  chose  that  of  service.  Now  in  a  humble  way 
each  young  person  to  whom  Providence  has  committed  the 
trust  of  power  has  to  go  through  the  same  process.  Power 
may  come  in  various  forms,  in  wealth,  talents,  social  position, 
education,  or  in  that  most  potent  and  charming  of  all  oppor- 
tunities, the  mere  being  young  and  having  all  the  world  before 
one.  Every  young  person  has  within  him  powers  unknown 
to  himself,  unknown  to  the  world.  What  will  he  do  with  those 
powers,  is  the  one  great  question  of  life.  Now  mere  natural 
instinct  within  him  says  to  him,  "Assert  these  powers  to  the 
utmost  for  your  own  advancement,  enjoyment,  glory:  put  the 
spurs  to  all  your  faculties  and  ride  through  and  over  all 
opposition  to  the  throne  of  your  ambition."  A  more  sober 
and  more  common  policy  bids  him  pay  some  deference  to  the 
rights  of  others,  and  by  mingling  persuasion  with  self-assertion 
win  the  favor  and  help  of  his  fellow-men,  but  after  all  make 
self-realization  the  main  thing.  This  is  the  substance  of  that 


204  THE  VERY  ELECT 

modified  selfishness  which  in  our  day  is  much  extolled  under 
the  name  of  culture  and  Hellenism.  But  the  example  of 
Christ  commends  to  us  a  wholly  different  policy  of  life,  different 
in  its  source  and  inspiration,  and  different  in  all  its  outflow. 
He  says  to  us :  "  Use  power  for  the  sake  of  blessing :  subordinate 
your  rights  to  the  benefit  of  others."  He  does  not  bid  you 
despise  power,  or  undervalue  rights,  or  fling  away  ambition. 
That  were  really  and  truly  to  commit  "the  great  refusal,"  to 
choose  basely  and  indolently  the  less  in  character  and  attain- 
ment when  you  might  have  had  the  greater;  to  be  the  man  of 
one  talent  when  you  might  have  had  the  ten.  Christianity 
exalts  power,  but  consecrates  it.  It  says,  "Covet  earnestly 
the  best  gifts,"  but  use  them  in  the  more  excellent  way  of 
charity.  Look  upon  the  careers  of  men  and  women.  Between 
and  across  all  other  differences  this  main  difference  runs:  one 
is  actuated  by  selfishness,  another  by  good-will.  One  may 
be  a  queen  or  a  washerwoman,  a  duke  or  a  day-laborer;  one 
may  be  able  to  say,  "Soul,  thou  hast  much  good  laid  up  for 
many  years,"  or  be  constrained  to  pray,  "Give  me  this  day 
my  daily  bread,"  and  still  the  main  difference  is  whether  one 
will  clutch  all  he  can  get,  be  it  much  or  little;  or  bestow  all 
he  has,  be  it  much  or  little;  whether  or  not  one  is  happy  in 
making  others  happy;  rich,  but  richer  in  charity;  poor,  but 
making  many  rich. 

It  remains  to  say,  finally,  that  the  unselfish  career  is  the  only 
successful  career.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  goodness  that  it 
harbors  no  thought  of  ultimate  advantage;  like  the  angels, 
doing  "all  for  love  and  nothing  for  reward" — but  reward 
comes  nevertheless  and  must  come.  It  is  in  the  nature  of 
things,  in  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  that  goodness  eter- 
nally succeeds  and  selfishness  eternally  fails.  Things  were  all 
wrong  were  it  otherwise.  Rivers  must  run  to  the  ocean;  fire 
ascending  seeks  the  sun;  selfishness  must  debase,  charity 
must  exalt.  Wherefore,  in  strict  conformity  to  this  law,  God 
hath  highly  exalted  Jesus  and  given  him  a  name  above  every 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  205 

name.  And  by  the  same  "wherefore"  God  also  exalts  every 
one  that  humbles  himself  for  the  sake  of  others,  and  endears 
and  glorifies  the  names  of  those  who  bear  others'  burdens  and 
so  fulfil  the  law  of  Christ.  Whose  are  the  exalted  names  in 
history?  Theirs  who  assert  and  magnify  and  aggrandize 
themselves,  who  wade  through  slaughter  to  a  throne?  or  those 
who  come  down  from  the  throne  to  feed  the  poor  and  comfort 
the  lowly?  Has  history  canonized  Herod  or  John  the  Baptist, 
Nero  or  Paul,  Elizabeth  of  England  or  Elizabeth  of  Hungary, 
the  unknown  conquerer  of  the  Battle  of  Zutphen  or  the  dying 
knight  whose  compassion  sent  the  cup  from  his  own  lips  to  the 
common  soldier's?  There  are  earthly  names  to  which  in  a 
qualified  sense  every  knee  bows,  every  head  is  uncovered. 
They  are  not  the  names  of  men  of  great  genius,  usually  self- 
indulgent,  petulant,  spoiled  by  applause;  not  the  Byrons,  the 
Shelleys,  the  Poes;  not  the  men  of  iron  will  who  ride  down  and 
trample  on  all  that  opposes  them,  the  Wallensteins,  the  Napo- 
leons, the  Bismarcks ;  not  the  men  who  sweep  into  their  own 
granaries  such  large  portions  of  the  world's  annual  harvests 
that  their  barns  burst  out  with  plenty;  not  these,  but  the  names 
of  those  who  spend  and  are  spent  to  bring  good  to  the  needy 
and  the  suffering,  the  prisoner  and  captive,  the  homeless  and 
lost,  the  Wilberforces  and  Howards,  the  Nightingales  and 
Fryes,  the  Peabodys  and  Montefiores.  And  there  are  other 
names  now  unknown  to  fame,  of  those  who  have  left  luxurious 
homes  to  go  down  into  the  lowly  cabins  of  the  South  to  teach 
the  children  of  the  freedmen;  of  those  who  not  without  a  natu- 
ral sigh  have  turned  their  backs  upon  libraries  and  the  attrac- 
tions of  learned  leisure  and  have  gone  to  preach  the  gospel 
to  the  Kaffir  and  the  Hottentot;  of  those,  the  gentle,  the 
tenderly-nurtured,  the  timid,  who  have  picked  their  way 
through  lanes  and  byways  and  city  slums,  amid  filth,  and 
pestilence  and  loathsome  vice,  seeking  out  and  saving  that 
which  is  lost, — names  which  will  never  figure  on  any  human 
roll  of  worthies,  the  mention  of  which  in  terms  of  praise  would 


206  THE  VERY  ELECT 

surprise  and  shock  the  possessors,  but  which  will  one  day  blaze 
out  with  a  lustre  excelling  all  other  names  of  earth  and  shall 
shine  as  the  stars  in  the  firmament  for  ever  and  ever.  There 
is  no  visible  crown,  however  heavy  with  gold  and  studded  with 
jewels  and  lustrous  with  historic  glory,  which  is  so  much  to  be 
coveted  as  the  diadem,  now  invisible,  but  hereafter  to  be 
revealed,  which  shall  forever  enrich  the  brow  of  Divine 
Charity. 

ADDRESS  TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS 

The  criticism  lies  heavily  against  what  is  called  culture  in 
our  day,  against  the  life  you  have  been  leading  for  the  last 
four  years,  that  it  tends  to  selfishness.  To  rouse,  cultivate, 
balance,  perfect  one's  own  powers,  these,  it  is  said,  are  the 
watchwords  of  culture,  and  these  are  but  so  many  rubrics  in 
the  worship  of  self-seclusion  from  the  active  service  of  life. 
Supreme  devotion  to  personal  attainment,  social  intercourse 
limited  and  narrowing,  all  these  things  tend,  it  is  said,  and 
seldom  fail,  to  produce  egotism.  Is  the  charge  true?  If  it  is 
true,  it  is  a  condemnation  of  the  whole  process  and  of  the  entire 
result.  If  education  tends  to  make  our  youths  self-conscious, 
self -asserting,  selfish,  it  is  unchristian;  it  is  undoing  what  the 
grace  of  God  in  all  the  Christian  ordering  and  discipline  of 
life,  is  aiming  to  do.  Better  the  loving  service  of  their  fellows 
by  unlearned  and  ignorant  men,  by  fishermen  and  laborers, 
than  the  cold,  heartless,  cynic  refinement  of  self-centered 
scholars.  But  is  the  charge  true?  Is  it  true  as  regards  you? 
What  are  your  hearts  set  on  as  you  look  forward  into  life  from 
the  elevation  reached  today?  Are  you  going  into  the  world 
eager  to  clutch  its  prizes,  to  insist  on  your  claim  to  the  largest 
possible  amount  of  honor,  money,  power,  happiness?  Or,  if 
it  is  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  you  have  any  very  definite 
purposes  as  to  what  you  will  be  or  do,  ask  yourself  which  way 
you  find  yourselves  unconsciously  tending.  That  is  a  question 
which  touches  us  as  well  as  you.  Which  way  is  the  momentum 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  207 

generated  by  four  years  of  study  carrying  you,  toward  self- 
assertion  or  toward  service?  Have  you  begun  to  be  affected 
by  the  world's  great  needs,  by  the  sight  of  men's  sorrows,  and 
infirmities  and  sins?  Do  human  error  and  folly  and  wrong 
affect  you  with  disgust,  and  prompt  you  to  draw  your  scholarly 
robes  about  you  and  retreat  into  the  shade;  or  do  you  long  to 
take  your  human  heart,  your  trained  faculties,  and  your  youth- 
ful energies  into  this  serious,  tragic,  fateful  but  hopeful  human 
scene,  and  do  something  as  God  shall  give  you  grace  and 
opportunity? 

I  feel  sure  that  you  respond  in  some  measure  to  this  appeal, 
that  you  choose  in  your  hearts  today  the  generous,  self-giving. 
Christian  idea  of  life,  and  not  the  selfish,  satanic  idea.  If  you 
can  look  into  your  hearts  and  honestly  say  that  such  is  your 
thought  and  purpose,  and  that  it  has  been  formed  and  con- 
firmed in  you  by  the  scholarly  pursuits  of  these  four  years,  that 
is  the  noblest  thing  you  can  say  for  liberal  study  and  for  your 
Alma  Mater.  It  is  to  say  that  this  is  a  Christian  institution, 
that  sound  learning  is  handmaid  to  goodness,  that  science  truly 
so  called  tendeth  to  charity. 

I  do  not,  therefore,  giving  you  today  our  last  counsel,  point 
out  to  you  the  prizes  and  honors  of  life,  and  bid  you  go  and 
win  them  for  your  glory  and  ours.  I  point  out  to  you  a 
nobler  mission.  I  call  you  to  a  higher  glory,  the  mission  and 
the  glory  of  ministering  to  the  highest  good  of  men.  Who 
among  you  will  be  the  greatest?  He  or  she  who  best  serves 
others.  There  are  great  works  to  be  done  in  scholarship,  in 
professional  and  industrial  life,  and  I  trust  that  you  will  do 
your  full  share  of  them.  There  are  pulpits  to  be  filled,  judges' 
benches  to  be  occupied,  papers  to  be  edited,  railroads  to  be 
built,  and  we  expect  you  to  be  among  the  foremost  in  all  these 
vocations.  But  we  hope  for  you  something  better  than  that, 
namely,  that  you  will  serve  your  generation  by  the  will  of  God, 
that  you  will  fill  your  lives  full  of  humble,  loving  ministrations 
to  those  who  need  you  and  them.  Remember  that  the  great 


208  THE  VERY  ELECT 

prizes  are  not  those  that  are  snatched  from  unwilling  hands, 
but  those  which  are  conferred  by  hands  uplifted  in  thanks  and 
blessing;  that  the  name  which  is  above  every  name  is  not  the 
name  that  is  sounded  from  the  clarion  of  fame,  but  the  name 
that  is  lisped  by  infants  and  syllabled  by  children,  and  whis- 
pered in  secret  prayer,  and  raised  aloft  in  thanksgiving  and 
song.  Be  your  prize  the  Christian  prize,  your  name  the  worthy 
name,  by  which  to  be  called  is  the  true  nobility. 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD 

Seeing  that  the  root  of  the  matter  is  found  in  me.1    Job  xix:  28. 

ONE  of  the  sublimest  and  most  pathetic  passages  in  human 
experience — for  it  must  first  have  been  experience  or  it  could 
not  have  been  drama — is  this  of  Job,  prostrate  amid  the  wreck 
of  everything  dear  to  him,  scorned  by  his  friends,  forsaken 
apparently  by  God  and  man,  and  yet  in  spite  of  all  lifting  his 
voice  above  the  storm  and  crying:  "  Till  I  die,  I  will  not  remove 
mine  integrity  from  me.  My  righteousness  I  hold  fast  and  will 
not  let  it  go:  my  heart  shall  not  reproach  me  so  long  as  I  live." 
This  is  the  man  who  with  sublime  confidence  in  his  convictions 
asserts  that  the  root  of  the  matter  is  found  in  him.  And 
surely  it  is.  Whether  he  was  an  Israelite  or  an  Arabian, 
whether  he  was  of  the  spiritual  lineage  and  heritage  of  David 
and  Solomon  and  Asaph,  or  was  wrestling  with  the  hard  prob- 
lems of  life  alone  in  the  desert,  it  is  plain  that  God  had  spoken 
with  him,  had  indeed  imparted  to  him  the  great  secret  of  the 
Universe.  For  what  Job  meant  by  "the  root  of  the  matter" 
was  his  answer  to  that  greatest  of  questions  which  men  have 
discussed  in  all  ages  and  will  continue  to  discuss  to  the  end  of 
time,  the  question  over  which  the  ancients  disputed  in  their 
quest  for  the  summum  bonum,  which  the  catechism  proposes 
when  it  asks,  "  What  is  the  chief  end  of  man?"  and  which  has 
been  recently  revived  between  the  optimists  and  the  pessimists 
in  the  query  whether  life  is  worth  living.  Job's  answer,  the 
answer  more  or  less  clear  of  all  the  sages  and  seers  of  the  race, 
and  God's  final  answer  in  Jesus  Christ,  is  one  and  the  same. 
To  announce  it  is  to  seem  to  utter  a  commonplace,  and  yet  to 

1  Although  the  biblical  scholarship  of  today  assigns  another  meaning  to 
this  text  than  that  here  presented,  the  pertinence  of  the  theme  and  its 
attachment  to  a  phrase  in  itself  singularly  suggestive  and  expressive  of 
the  underlying  motive  of  the  book  of  Job  has  led  to  its  inclusion. 

14  209 


210  THE  VERY  ELECT 

announce  it  with  fitting  accompaniment  all  the  morning  stars 
should  sing  together,  and  all  the  sons  of  God  shout  for  joy, 
and  the  multitude  of  the  heavenly  host  should  sing  Glory  to 
God  in  the  Highest — for  it  is  the  glory  of  God  and  the  glory  of 
God's  universe.  Put  together  all  that  the  human  race  has 
learned  through  its  experience  of  sin  and  suffering,  all  that  the 
wisest  and  best  men  have  gathered  by  meditation  upon  human 
life,  all  that  God  has  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners 
spoken  by  his  prophets;  bring  forth  Christ's  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  and  all  his  other  sermons,  and  his  conversations  and 
prayers  down  to  the  very  last  word,  and  the  sum  and  essence  of 
it  all  is,  that  the  supreme  good  in  God's  universe  is  to  be  good, 
even  as  God  is  good,  even  as  the  Lord  Christ  is  good.  And  to 
know  this,  and  to  believe  it,  and  to  live  by  it,  is  to  have  the 
root  of  the  whole  matter.  It  is,  first  of  all,  to  have  faith  in 
God  as  the  supreme  good,  to  admire  him,  to  love  him,  to  wor- 
ship him,  not  because  he  is  almighty,  or  all-knowing,  but 
because  in  the  profoundest  and  loftiest  sense  and  degree  he 
has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him,  because  to  him  all-knowing 
and  all-powerful  as  he  is,  the  substance  and  heart  of  his 
Godhead  is  moral  goodness.  As  he  would  not  be  true  God, 
would  not  be  worthy  our  love  and  worship  if,  having  made 
all  the  stars  and  kept  them  in  their  orbits  to  the  minutest 
second,  he  could  commit  one  small  action  of  cruelty  or 
revenge,  so  Job  would  not  be  true  man,  would  not  have 
the  root  of  the  matter  in  him,  if  he  could  worship  such 
a  being.  The  most  dangerous  of  all  heresies,  the  most  cor- 
rupting of  all  theologies,  are  those  that  tamper  with  the 
divine  perfections  in  the  supposed  interest  of  his  govern- 
ment, those  which  set  up  his  force,  his  authority,  his  fiat, 
anything  but  his  goodness,  as  supreme.  His  goodness  is  his 
sovereignty.  He  is  the  supreme  being  because  he  is  the 
supreme  goodness.  And  that  this  is  the  divine  thought,  that 
God's  supreme  care  is  that  goodness,  that  righteousness  and 
love  prevail  in  his  universe,  we  do  not  need  to  hold  like  Job 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  211 

by  mere  tenacious  and  stubborn  fidelity:  we  know  it  and  all 
intelligences  know  it,  because  it  has  been  revealed  to  us  and 
to  them  in  the  most  impressive  and  the  most  persuasive  of  all 
possible  revelations,  namely  in  Jesus  Christ.  To  know  Jesus 
Christ  is  to  know  that  God  is  not  content  to  "maintain  a  moral 
government  by  a  system  of  rewards  and  punishments,"  as 
the  moralists  say  of  him,  but  that  he  will  use  all  the  resources 
of  his  omnipotent  love  to  make  goodness  supreme  in  his  uni- 
verse. To  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  is  to  enter  with  him  into 
this  purpose  with  hearty  and  loving  co-operation.  For  the 
root  of  the  matter  in  man  is  the  same  as  in  God.  I  would  say 
it  is  love  if  only  we  will  remember  that  love  is  ethical.  I 
would  say  it  is  righteousness  if  only  we  will  remember  that  the 
heart  of  righteousness  is  love.  For  no  one  term  will  say  for  us 
all  we  need  to  say.  Justice  is  cold  and  harsh:  virtue  shifts 
its  meaning  with  times  and  races:  holiness  is  a  description 
rather  than  an  attribute.  To  have  the  root  of  the  matter  is  to 
give  the  supremacy  in  our  convictions,  our  affections,  and  our 
wills  to  that  supreme  quality  which  our  Lord  had  in  mind  when 
he  said,  "There  is  none  good  but  one:  that  is,  God." 

This  belief  as  a  practical  force  in  character  implies  two 
things:  the  belief  first,  that  goodness  is  best,  and  secondly, 
that  it  is  strongest.  And  this  is  the  right  order — first  and 
chief,  that  it  is  best,  most  to  be  coveted  and  prized  of  all 
things,  and  that  whether  it  succeed  or  not :  but  secondly,  that 
it  will  prevail,  and  that  those  who  side  with  it  shall  be  the  only 
successful  ones  in  all  the  universe. 

First  then,  that  goodness  is  best  of  all  things,  most  to  be 
desired  by  a  man  or  a  woman,  living  on  this  earth,  or  anywhere 
else,  now,  today,  tomorrow  and  forevermore.  These  be  brave 
words,  and  few  of  us  are  worthy  to  utter  them.  For  to  tell 
the  truth,  few  of  us  believe  them  in  our  heart  of  hearts.  Now 
and  then  in  our  inspired  moments  we  see  that  all  save  goodness 
is  vanity  and  vexation,  but  soon  the  glamour  comes  over 
everything,  and  we  see  things  in  false  lights,  and  the  beauty 


212  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  goodness  becomes  dim  to  our  eyes.  And  sometimes  it  seems 
as  though  the  course  of  human  life  were  designed  by  some 
malign  intelligence  for  the  express  purpose  of  disguising  from 
us  this  greatest  of  the  truths  we  need  to  know — as  though  the 
world  were  "all  a  fleeting  show  for  man's  illusion  given" — for 
persuading  him  that  money,  and  power,  and  beauty,  and  pleas- 
ure are  more  to  be  desired  than  goodness.  It  sometimes 
seems  to  us  that  a  simpler  civilization,  a  more  primitive  and 
hearty  style  of  living,  fewer  routs  and  gaieties,  would  give 
pure,  simple  goodness  a  better  chance  to  win  our  hearts.  But 
this  is  all  a  delusion.  The  Hottentots  and  Laplanders  can 
make  a  Vanity  Fair  out  of  their  rude  gewgaws  just  as  truly 
as  the  Parisians  with  their  diamonds  and  lace.  The  hard 
thing  to  do — and  virtue  is  never  easy — is  to  give  all  the 
accessories  of  life  their  due  and  still  make  goodness  chief:  to 
covet  earnestly  all  good  gifts,  money,  power,  social  graces, 
perhaps  to  covet  them  much,  certainly  as  much  as  they  deserve, 
and  still  to  covet  goodness  more — so  much  more  that  not  all 
the  money  and  all  the  pleasure  that  the  world  can  give  would 
be  purchased  at  the  price  of  one  wrong  action  or  one  wrong 
thought.  It  would  be  insincere  and  absurd  for  me  to  stand 
before  these  young  persons  who  are  going  to  live  amid  the 
splendid  civilization  of  the  twentieth  century,  and  disparage 
invention  and  art  and  culture  and  all  the  grand  and  lovely 
things  amid  which  they  will  live.  No,  go  in  and  possess  this 
goodly  land  in  God's  name,  as  much  of  it  as  virtue  and  honor 
and  charity  will  sanction,  and  no  more.  For  he  who  has  the 
root  of  the  matter  in  him,  who  cares  supremely  for  goodness 
and  temperately  for  all  other  things,  can  enjoy  all  these  good 
things  and  be  thankful,  or  he  can  forego  them  and  be  content, 
knowing  that  it  is  better  to  wear  homespun  over  an  honest 
heart  than  to  cover  a  mean  breast  with  lace  and  purple,  better 
to  be  right  than  to  be  president,  better  to  live  amid  hardship 
and  obscurity  and  have  sweet  and  holy  thoughts  than  to  ride 
upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth  with  remorse  sitting  by  one's 
side  and  vengeance  mounted  behind. 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  213 

But  secondly,  to  have  the  root  of  the  matter  is  to  have  faith 
in  the  triumphant  power  of  goodness.  There  is  a  subtle 
agency  at  work  among  mankind — every  young  man  has  felt  its 
insidious  suggestions — persuading  men  to  believe  that  good- 
ness is  feeble,  that  evil  is  an  overmatch  for  it;  that  not  virtue 
but  cunning,  fraud,  force,  get  the  upper  hand  in  the  universe. 
I  suppose  the  most  dangerous  of  all  temptations  to  a  young 
man  is  that  which  is  presented  by  the  temporary  success  of 
evil.  Why  should  I  struggle,  and  pinch,  and  go  threadbare 
in  order  to  be  virtuous,  when  moderate  and  respectable  vice 
pays  her  followers  so  much  more  liberally?  And  so  men  losing 
faith  in  the  stars  hitch  their  wagon  to  a  meteor.  But  he  who 
has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him  is  not  misled  by  these  false 
appearances.  He  corrects  the  impressions  of  his  eyes  by  the 
convictions  of  his  heart.  He  believes  that  goodness  wins 
always,  even  when  it  seems  to  lose;  that  cunning  and  fraud 
always  lose  even  when  they  seem  to  win;  that  the  heavy 
battalions  are  always  on  the  side  of  the  right,  even  when  its 
visible  champions  are  routed  from  the  field.  Who  does  not 
know  that  the  routed  cause  won  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  and 
the  battle  of  Bull  Run?  Has  not  the  world  confessed  that  the 
darkness  which  was  over  all  the  land  from  the  sixth  to  the 
ninth  hour  was  the  dawn  of  the  most  glorious  light  the  universe 
ever  beheld? 

Having  thus  seen  in  an  abstract  way  what  it  is  to  have  the 
root  of  the  matter  in  one,  let  us  contemplate  the  actual  man, 
the  man  of  today,  the  man  who  is  fitted  to  live  in  the  twentieth 
century  of  the  Christian  era,  because  he  has  the  root  of  the 
matter  in  him.  But  first  for  the  sake  of  contrast  look  for  a 
moment  at  the  man  in  whom  the  root  of  the  matter  is  not 
found — the  man  who  has  not  settled  in  his  mind  this  greatest 
of  questions,  who  leaves  it  for  settlement  by  impulse  and  under 
the  stress  of  temptation.  We  all  know  the  rootless  character — 
the  character  devoid  of  principle — we  may  say  the  charac- 
terless character.  Because  it  has  no  root,  it  has  no  capacity 


214  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  growth,  no  power  of  resistance,  no  form  or  comeliness:  its 
leaf  also  withers  and  whatsoever  it  doeth  comes  to  failure. 
The  promising  boy  dropping  into  lassitude  and  foregoing  all  the 
prizes  of  life,  the  pet  of  the  household  and  of  the  Sunday-school 
yielding  little  by  little  till  he  becomes  the  defaulter  and  the 
refugee;  the  young  man  who  may  see  himself  in  the  picture 
of  Charles  Stuart  as  drawn  by  the  great  satirist,  "heir  to  one 
of  the  greatest  names,  of  the  greatest  kingdoms  and  of  the 
greatest  misfortunes  in  Europe,  he  was  content  to  lay  the 
dignity  of  his  birth  and  grief  at  the  wooden  shoes  of  a  chamber- 
maid and  repent  afterwards  in  ashes  taken  from  the  dust- 
pan," the  "expectancy  and  rose"  of  the  fair  Austrian  state 
breaking  his  emperor's  and  his  father's  heart  and  shaming  all 
who  should  have  been  his  subjects  by  a  career  and  a  death  over 
which  history  must  be  silent — these  are  but  types  of  the 
character  which  having  no  root  of  its  own,  no  self-determining 
power,  is  the  easy  victim  of  any  passion  or  folly  which  the 
idle,  tempting,  rosy  hours  may  bring. 

Another  type  of  character  which  it  is  very  necessary  to 
distinguish  from  the  ideal  we  are  contemplating  is  one  which 
is  often  confounded  with  it.  I  hope  it  is  not  ominous  that  this 
profound  biblical  expression  which  we  are  considering,  once 
so  familiar,  has  almost  become  obsolete  in  our  moral  and 
religious  vocabulary.  It  is  certainly  to  be  hoped  that  we  have 
not  transferred  our  moral  approbation  to  what  is  implied  in  the 
word  "radical" — which  describes  a  far  inferior  character,  the 
fundamental  conception  of  which  is  the  tearing  up  and  destroy- 
ing something,  root  and  branch.  The  very  term  "radical" 
suggests  platforms,  heated  resolutions,  angry  oratory,  fanatics 
with  long  hair  and  fiery  eyes,  scattering  invective  and  scorn, 
and  investing  every  cause  they  advocate  with  associations  of 
bitterness  and  hate.  That  the  root  of  the  matter  may  be 
found  in  one  is  the  mild  but  vigorous  phrase  which  brings  before 
us  the  sweet,  calm  faces  of  presbyters  in  grave  and  solemn 
council;  the  family  around  the  altar  yearning  over  some  absent 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  215 

or  wayward  member;  the  Covenanter,  the  Puritan,  the 
Huguenot,  steadying  their  faith  in  the  midst  of  adversity  by 
clinging  to  the  reality  of  things  in  the  character  and  the 
providence  of  God.  With  all  that  is  admirable  and  hopeful 
in  the  movements  of  our  times  there  is  a  dangerous  tendency 
toward  radicalism.  What  we  call  progress  is  always  on  the 
verge  of  fanaticism.  The  cry  of  reform  is,  "  There  is  no  God 
but  God  and  I  am  his  prophet."  There  is  a  more  excellent 
way.  It  is  good  to  be  zealously  affected  in  a  good  cause. 
It  is  good  to  be  honest  and  thoroughgoing.  But  it  is  better  to 
have  the  root  of  the  matter  in  us  than  to  be  radicals.  Job  is 
a  better  teacher  of  the  problems  of  life  than  Mohammed. 
Christianity  presents  a  better  solution  of  human  difficulties 
than  any  school  of  philosophy  or  any  scheme  of  reform. 

I.  We  are  now  prepared  to  say  that  he  who  has  the  root  of 
the  matter  in  him  will  be  a  Realist,  if  I  may  use  the  word 
in  this  sense — he  will  be  a  devotee  of  reality.  It  was  this  trait 
of  the  character  in  question  which  made  it  such  a  favorite  with 
a  certain  serious  order  of  mind  in  the  elder  days,  because  it 
seemed  to  those  serious  men  to  deal  with  the  reality  of  things, 
because  with  a  great  and  noble  disdain  for  trivialities  and 
accidentals  it  grasps  in  a  masterful  way  the  very  heart  of  things. 
Let  a  man  get  it  thoroughly  settled  in  his  mind  that  in  God's 
universe  righteousness  can  never  be  evaded,  or  flanked,  or 
outwitted,  that  by  no  artifice  of  his  can  the  course  of  provi- 
dential justice  be  obstructed  or  turned  aside,  and  now  you 
have  one  whose  supreme  interest  is  to  know  things  just  as 
they  are.  Subterfuge,  evasion,  plausible  sophistry  are  to  him 
an  abomination.  He  turns  a  front  face  to  everything:  he  says 
to  every  event,  every  man,  every  possibility,  "Tell  me  just 
what  you  are."  Let  there  be  no  adjusting  the  lights  for  effect, 
no  collusion  with  plausibilities,  no  evasion  or  postponement 
of  the  main  issue.  Give  me  not  a  courtier  who  will  disguise 
the  truth  from  me  under  some  fine  phrase,  but  a  Lioncourt 
who  will  say  bluntly  "Sire,  it  is  a  revolution,"  a  Nathan  who, 


216  THE  VERY  ELECT 

when  I  have  sinned  and  am  luxuriating  in  my  sin,  will  say 
unto  me,  "Thou  art  the  man!"  Forms,  traditions,  venerable 
systems,  he  will  respect  for  the  sake  of  the  reality  which  they 
are  assumed  to  enfold,  but  always  reserves  and  often  exercises 
the  right  to  go  back  to  the  reality  itself.  The  injunction, 
"not  to  move  the  things  that  are  quiet,"  he  meets  with 
Dante's  word  that  the  living  man  "moves  whatever  he 
touches."  Is  this  searching  spirit  all  abroad  in  our  day 
challenging  everything,  sparing  nothing?  Let  it  search.  If 
Rachel  is  concealing  her  idols,  let  not  the  sanctities  of  the 
tent  remit  the  search.  Let  us  have  the  truth  though  all  the 
conventionalities  be  offended. 

II.  He  will  be  an  Idealist.  The  only  real  is  the  ideal. 
The  true  nature  of  anything  is  its  perfection.  The  root  is 
not  satisfied  with  being  root.  It  pushes  up  into  stalk  and  leaf 
and  bright  consummate  flower.  The  scripture  term  for  this 
spirit  is  faith — the  substance  of  things  hoped  for.  The  man 
who  has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him  will  be  a  man  of  faith. 
And  by  reason  of  his  faith  he  will  be  able  to  pluck  up  sycamine 
trees,  remove  mountains,  subdue  kingdoms,  work  right- 
eousness, obtain  promises,  and  overcome  the  world.  And 
this  is  the  type  of  man  our  age  needs;  not  the  radical,  who 
destroys  the  good  with  the  bad,  who  plucks  up  the  wheat  with 
the  tares,  and  is  often  in  virtual  league  with  the  enemy  in 
thwarting  measures  for  positive  and  practical  good,  but  the 
idealist,  the  man  of  faith,  who  first  clearly  conceives  the 
attainable  good  and  then  combines  sober  thought,  glowing 
enthusiasm  and  devoted  energy  in  the  work  of  attaining  it. 
All  great  permanent  advances  made  by  mankind  have  been 
first  conceived  in  the  heart  of  some  man  who  had  the  root  of 
the  matter  in  him;  who  had  a  great  and  noble  faith  in  truth, 
who  believed  that  all  truth  is  practicable;  and  who  having  this 
calm  faith  could  wait  like  God  till  the  fulness  of  time  should 
come.  All  impatience,  all  fretfulness  does  but  shatter  the 
fruit  before  the  mellowing  year.  Have  you  an  idea,  a  veritable 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  217 

idea?  Have  faith  in  it;  work  in  harmony  with  its  unfolding; 
grow  with  it  as  it  grows;  when  it  ripens  you,  too,  will  be  ripe 
for  action,  swift,  decisive,  masterful. 

III.  It  is  but  a  short  step  forward  to  say,  he  will  be  an 
Optimist.  He  who  has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him,  who 
believes  in  the  supremacy  of  goodness  in  the  universe,  will 
never  despair  of  mankind  or  of  the  future.  He  will  not  shut 
his  eyes  to  the  dark  things  of  life,  but  he  will  see  them  to  be 
the  incidental  and  the  transient  things,  not  the  principal  and 
the  permanent.  All  true  religion  is  optimistic:  pessimism  is 
essentially  irreligious.  It  springs  from  a  lack  of  faith  in  the 
power  of  God  to  keep  his  promises.  It  is  a  shame  and  an 
outrage  upon  Christianity  for  a  pulpit,  or  a  religious  journal, 
or  a  community  of  Christians  to  set  forth  a  gloomy,  morose, 
ill-boding,  fretful  Christianity.  I  go  sometimes  to  the  read- 
ing-room of  a  Sunday  and  look  over  the  various  religious 
journals.  I  grieve  to  say  that,  with  the  exception  of  one  or 
two  which  are  tabooed  by  all  the  rest  as  heretical,  our  religious 
journals  are  drearily  pessimistic.  Just  as  there  are  men  for 
whom  the  sun  has  no  interest  except  when  on  rare  occasions 
he  is  in  eclipse,  so  these  journals  see  nothing  in  our  religious 
life  but  infidelity,  sabbath-breaking,  the  decay  of  conscience 
and  abounding  worldliness:  nothing  in  the  world  of  business 
but  the  few  defalcations :  nothing  in  our  public  life  but  corrup- 
tion: nothing  in  our  social  life  but  heartlessness  and  intrigue. 
From  this  false  religious  spirit  made  up  of  conceit  and  unchari- 
tableness,  it  is  refreshing  to  turn  to  the  less  sanctimonious  but 
far  more  fair  and  tolerant  and  really  appreciative  tone  of  the 
best  secular  press  in  its  comments  upon  current  events.  When 
men  are  strong  in  their  own  faith  and  aspiring  in  their  own 
lives,  they  look  cheerfully  and  hopefully  on  all  around  them 
and  all  that  is  before  them.  When  men  begin  to  think  that 
the  universe  is  going  to  pieces,  it  is  likely  to  be  because  their 
own  heads  are  reeling  and  their  own  footing  is  tottering  down. 
It  was  when  the  prophet  was  running  away  from  his  place  and 


218  THE  VERY  ELECT 

his  duty  that  he  thought  himself  the  only  faithful  one  left  in 
Israel.  When  he  went  back  to  his  post,  he  found  seven 
thousand  men  ready  to  go  with  him  to  victory  or  death — and 
they  went  to  victory.  Lord,  we  pray  thee,  open  the  eyes  of 
all  young  men  that  they  may  see  that  they  that  are  with 
God  are  more  than  they  that  be  against  him! 

Finally,  he  will  be  an  Apostle.  What  right  has  a  man  who 
holds  the  secret  of  the  universe  to  keep  it  to  himself?  Nay, 
he  will  have  neither  the  desire  nor  the  power  so  to  do.  Every 
true  man  feels  the  possession  of  a  great  truth  to  be  a  burden 
upon  his  heart,  urging  him  forth  first  into  the  desert  to  try 
conclusions  with  his  own  soul,  and  then  far  and  wide  among 
men  to  persuade  them  to  share  with  him  the  great  revelation. 
Or  rather,  a  great  world-truth,  a  root-principle  of  human  life, 
is  not  a  possession  at  all :  it  is  a  trust :  and  the  faithful  trustee 
has  St.  Paul's  feeling,  "Woe  is  me  if  I  preach  not  the  good 
news!"  Here  comes  a  man  who  tells  us  that  he  has  doubts 
about  some  things  that  we  believe.  We  will  say  to  him, 
"You  may  be  right,  but  the  trouble  with  me  is  not  that  I 
believe  too  much,  but  that  I  do  not  believe  enough.  Give  me 
the  right  belief,  and  that  will  expel  the  wrong."  But  doubt 
never  made  an  apostle,  though  it  has  made  many  radicals. 
It  leaves  the  soul  empty,  swept  and  garnished  only  for  fouler 
spirits  to  enter  and  dwell  there.  But  once  in  a  great  while, 
ages  intervening  perhaps,  there  comes  an  apostle,  one  who 
has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him :  he  is  earnest  but  calm :  he  is 
positive,  but  uses  no  superlatives :  he  believes  what  he  says,  but 
he  says  no  more  than  he  believes :  he  tells  me  that  righteousness 
is  the  supreme  good  and  that  the  heart  of  righteousness  is  love : 
that  on  this  principle  God's  throne  is  built,  and  to  it  all  this 
fair  universe  is  adjusted:  that  all  the  beatitudes  rest  upon 
those  who  are  in  loving  sympathy  with  it,  and  all  the  curses 
upon  those  who  rebel  against  it :  he  preaches,  in  fact,  or  preaches 
over  again,  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  the  Sermon  on 
Calvary,  the  one  greatest,  grandest  thought  that  God  has 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  219 

ever  uttered,  or  can  utter,  that  so  absolute  in  his  mind  is  the 
supremacy  of  goodness  that  in  order  to  maintain  it  heaven 
itself  must  stoop  to  this  far  away  sinful  planet  of  earth  and 
sacrifice  something  of  its  own  felicity.  This  is  the  truth  which 
has  made  apostles  of  men  and  women  in  all  the  Christian  ages. 
This  is  the  truth  which,  slowly  dawning  upon  the  Christian 
mind  and  heart,  but  coming  with  greater  power  in  our  own 
time  than  ever  before,  is  to  make  apostles  of  all  true  believers. 
God  give  us  all  a  share  in  this  most  glorious  apostleship,  which 
shall  bring  in  the  reign  of  righteousness  and  love  in  all  the  earth. 

To  the  Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

It  is,  I  think,  a  fair  assumption  that  to  have  made  a  college 
course  a  part  of  the  preparation  for  life  indicates  in  your  minds 
a  purpose  to  make  thorough  work  of  life  itself.  For  surely 
the  faith  and  endurance  and  sacrifice  which  a  successful  college 
career  involves  must  give  some  good  assurance  of  high  and 
serious  aims.  There  are  few  experiences  in  human  life  which 
more  thoroughly  test  the  quality  of  a  youth,  whether  he  has 
or  has  not  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him,  than  those  through 
which  you  have  gone  during  the  past  four  years.  And  it  is 
the  one  great  office  of  a  wisely  ordered  system  of  education  to 
deepen  and  confirm  in  the  maturing  mind  this  thoroughgoing 
faith  in  the  high  meanings  of  life  and  character.  Years  hence 
I  trust  you  will  be  able  to  appreciate  better  than  you  now  can, 
and  that  you  will  then  heartily  acknowledge  that  this  institu- 
tion, the  ideas  for  which  it  stands  and  which  have  entered  into 
your  intellectual  and  moral  life,  the  training  it  has  given  you, 
the  personal  influence  of  its  instructors,  have  helped  you  to 
get  firm  hold  of  those  true  principles  of  character  which  alone 
can  give  to  life  stability,  dignity  and  power.  That  you  may 
say  perhaps  to  your  children,  and  that  your  life  should  say  to 
all  who  may  know  you,  "Our  Alma  Mater  gave  us  scientific 
knowledge,  literary  accomplishments,  the  love  and  the  begin- 
nings of  culture,  but  after  all  the  best  she  did  for  us  was  to 


220  THE  VERY  ELECT 

implant  within  our  young  hearts  and  minds  the  root  of  the 
matter,  a  reasonable  and  confident  faith  in  the  eternal  prin- 
ciples which  control  the  universe" — this  will  be  our  great 
satisfaction  and  reward.  To  watch  you  hereafter  winning 
your  way,  not  by  tricks  and  devices,  not  by  any  low  arts  which 
however  they  may  seem  to  succeed,  always  lower  the  man  and 
bring  him  to  failure  at  last,  but  by  joining  your  fortunes  with 
those  of  truth  and  righteousness,  and  all  good  enterprises,  and 
thus,  whatever  may  be  your  intermediate  future,  earning  the 
right  to  rejoice  with  those  who  shall  as  certainly  win  in  the  end, 
as  God  is  true  and  goodness  supreme — this  is  in  your  behalf 
today,  and  in  all  the  future,  our  prayer,  our  hope,  our  confi- 
dence. 

And  now,  assured  that  this  root-principle  of  character  is  in 
some  good  degree  established  in  you,  our  last  counsel  to  you  is 
that  you  do  what  in  you  lies  to  make  this  the  root-principle  of 
other  men's  lives,  that  is,  that  in  your  place  and  degree  you 
be  apostles.  And  to  be  an  apostle  it  is  not  necessary  to  run 
up  and  down  the  land,  and  lift  up  your  voice  on  the  house- 
tops and  in  public  assemblies.  All  that  is  not  so  great  a  power 
in  the  world  as  it  seems  to  be.  Remember  that  it  is  not 
knowledge,  nor  eloquence,  nor  pragmatic  zeal,  but  goodness 
that  is  to  be  supreme;  that  its  apostolate  has  the  investiture  of 
all  the  powers  and  all  the  promises.  A  real  apostle  can  fulfil 
his  ministry  as  truly  in  one  pflace  as  another,  if  only  it  be  the 
place  where  God  has  put  him.  That  true  woman,  who  amid 
the  swirl  and  crash  at  Johnstown  stood  by  her  telephone  to  the 
last  and  perished  with  it  and  did  not  know  that  she  was  a 
heroine  and  an  apostle,  is  today  preaching  fidelity  in  all  lands 
and  tongues  with  a  pathos  and  power  which  no  eloquence  but 
that  of  a  noble  deed  can  equal.  Only  be  faithful  to  the 
opportunities  as  they  come  to  you,  and  they  will  be  sure  to 
come  in  ways  and  at  times  you  could  not  have  anticipated. 

I  linger  a  moment  to  say  one  final  word — to  correct  one 
possible  wrong  impression.  You  have  been  wont  to  hear  us 


GOODNESS  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD  221 

say  much  of  the  intellectual  virtues.  We  have  often  extolled 
to  you  mental  discipline,  power,  culture.  I  do  not  wish  to 
retract  anything  so  said.  But  perhaps  we  have  said  too  little 
of  what  is  far  greater  than  all  this.  Perhaps  we  have  left  on 
your  minds  the  impression  that  in  our  estimate  science,  learn- 
ing, art,  eloquence,  are  the  things  worth  living  for.  God  for- 
give us  if  we  have  suffered  any  such  impression  to  go  forth 
from  us,  unworthy  as  that  would  be  of  the  Christian  scholars 
we  ought  and  try  to  be.  But  now  take  from  us  as  our  last 
word  the  assurance  of  our  deepest  conviction  that  there  is 
nothing  supremely  worth  living  for  but  in  a  large,  noble  and 
Christian  way,  to  be  good  men  and  women,  and  to  help  to 
make  others  so.  This  is  the  root  of  the  whole  matter.  And 
so  God  be  with  you ! 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    SOCIAL    REFORM 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  leaven  which  a  woman  took  and 
hid  in  three  measures  of  meal  till  the  whole  was  leavened.  Matt,  xiii:  33. 

DOES  Christianity  as  such  specially  interest  itself  in  social 
problems,  and  has  it  a  distinct  conception  of  social  well-being 
which  it  aims  to  realize?  These  questions,  always  pertinent, 
are  at  the  present  time  urgent  and  well-nigh  imperative. 

To  be  frank  with  ourselves,  the  apparent  attitude  of  Chris- 
tianity toward  these  urgent  human  problems  is  at  first  dis- 
appointing. An  enthusiastic  reformer,  sincerely  desiring  to 
help  his  fellow  men  in  bettering  their  condition,  comes  as  in 
duty  bound  to  the  New  Testament  for  guidance. 

Is  it  too  much  to  say  that  having  read  it  carefully  through 
he  has  not  found  the  guidance  which  he  thought  he  had  reason 
to  expect?  He  knows  from  history  that  in  our  Lord's  time 
society  was  in  a  fearful  state  of  corruption,  and  that  in  the  time 
of  the  apostles  it  grew  sensibly  worse;  that  the  rule  of  the 
Tiberiuses  and  the  Neroes,  the  administrations  of  the  proconsuls 
and  praetors,  the  slave-dealers,  the  dissolute  condition  of  the 
family,  that  a  hundred  bad  institutions  and  a  thousand  bad 
customs  seemed  to  appeal  to  the  reformer  of  that  generation 
for  a  revival  of  the  scathing  denunciations  which  the  prophets 
of  old  had  uttered  against  the  abominations  of  their  times,  and 
for  the  reconstructive  word  and  power  which  should  bring 
forth  a  new  political  and  social  status.  He  finds,  to  say  the 
truth,  very  little  which  answers  to  this  expectation.  Our  Lord 
bids  the  inquirer  render  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's 
and  adds  no  word  to  relieve  or  limit  the  injunction  though 
Caesar  were  Tiberius.  St.  Paul  is  as  strong  and  outspoken 
in  his  assertion  that  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God, 
and  that  he  that  resisteth  the  power  resisteth  the  ordinance 
of  God,  although  he  knew  the  actual  powers  to  be  unjust  and 

222 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  SOCIAL  REFORM        223 

tyrannical  through  and  through — as  though  the  sceptre  of 
imperial  rule  were  a  sceptre  of  righteousness.  There  are  no 
red  republican  texts  in  the  New  Testament;  few  that  are  ap- 
parently radical  or  revolutionary.  It  seems  indeed  to  have 
been  easier  for  those  who  would  inculcate  the  prerogatives  of 
rulers  and  the  submission  of  subjects  to  find  texts  to  their 
liking,  than  for  reformers  and  advocates  of  popular  rights. 
On  a  cursory  reading,  the  New  Testament  seems  to  favor  exist- 
ing institutions,  to  inculcate  a  conservative  amiable  acquies- 
cence in  things  as  they  are.  There  is  even  a  worse  aspect  of  the 
case.  When  certain  men  wash  their  hands  of  all  public  respon- 
sibility, claiming  either  that  they  are  so  good,  or  that  public 
affairs  are  so  bad,  that  to  touch  a  public  interest  is  defilement, 
they  seem  to  themselves  to  have  our  Lord's  example  to  sustain 
them,  and  point  to  what  they  consider  his  sublime  indifference 
to  all  that  we  call  public  affairs.  It  would  shock  the  religious 
sensibilities  of  very  many  to  conceive  of  Jesus  as  living  in 
our  day  and  taking  part  in  public  life;  of  the  apostles  as  sharing 
in  the  activities  of  modern  society;  as  voting,  holding  office, 
joining  in  public  debate,  bearing  arms,  and  the  like.  We  all, 
to  some  extent,  conceive  of  our  Lord  and  his  immediate 
disciples  as  merely  religious  persons,  more  like  monks  than 
like  men  and  citizens.  And  from  this  comes  the  common 
conception  of  religion  as  concerned  only  with  piety  and  the 
next  world,  and  as  rather  degrading  itself  by  entering  into  pro- 
jects for  making  this  world  a  better  place  for  Christians  to  live 
in. 

But  when  we  look  more  deeply  into  the  teaching  of  our  Lord 
and  the  apostles,  we  find  more  than  at  first  appears.  From  the 
very  outset  of  the  evangelic  era  we  begin  to  hear  of  what  we 
should  call,  in  modern  phase,  a  new  regime.  Both  John  the 
Baptist  and  Jesus  preached,  " Repent  for  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand."  It  is  part  of  our  churchly  training  to 
understand  by  this  phrase  merely  that  a  new  religious  dispen- 
sation was  heralded,  a  new  plan  of  salvation,  a  new  organization 


224  THE  VERY  ELECT 

for  saving  souls.  For  a  long  period,  in  fact  till  very  recent 
times,  those  who  were  sent  to  preach  the  Kingdom  of  God  in 
new  lands  seem  to  have  confined  themselves  to  a  purely  eccle- 
siastical view  of  human  salvation;  that  is,  to  bringing  about  cer- 
tain spiritual  affections  and  acts  in  individuals.  If  the  church 
as  a  spiritual  body  was  in  an  apparently  flourishing  condition, 
no  great  impatience  was  manifested  to  bring  about  a  social 
renovation.  It  was  not  considered  to  be  any  necessary  func- 
tion of  Christianity  as  such  to  reconstruct  human  society. 
We  have  had  a  vigorous  revival  in  our  day  of  this  conception 
of  Christian  propagandism, — an  exhortation  to  missionaries 
to  put  off  civilization,  to  resume  the  habits  of  primitive  man  in 
order  to  be  able  to  carry  to  the  heathen  in  a  sympathetic  way 
the  one  only  important  thing,  the  message  of  Christ  to  lost 
souls.  But  is  not  this  a  fatally  narrow  and  totally  inadequate 
view  of  that  kingdom  of  God  which  John  heralded  and  which 
Christ  preached  and  which  his  apostles  helped  men  to  begin 
to  realize?  I  repeat  that  the  kingdom  of  God,  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  as  Jesus  and  the  Apostles  used  the  phrase,  means  a 
new  regime  for  mankind,  a  reconstruction  of  humanity  result- 
ing in  a  reconstruction  of  human  society  in  all  its  relations. 
What  the  noblest  men  have  striven  after  in  their  ideal  states, 
Plato  in  his  Republic,  More  in  his  Utopia,  Bacon  in  his  New 
Atlantis,  that  is,  a  community  of  perfect  men  organized  into 
a  perfect  society,  the  society  contributing  to  the  perfection 
of  the  men  and  the  perfect  men  articulated  into  a  perfect 
society,  this  also  was  the  divine  idea  contemplated  in  the 
announcement  and  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
The  method  of  bringing  about  this  result  was  not  in  the  divine 
plan  as  it  had  been  in  the  human,  by  means  of  an  elaborate 
system  of  legislation.  What  the  divine  plan  was  our  Lord  set 
forth,  as  he  did  so  many  other  of  his  most  profound  and  far- 
reaching  principles,  in  this  parable  of  the  leaven  hid  in  the 
measures  of  meal  by  which  the  whole  was  leavened.  The 
Reformer  who  sought  guidance  in  the  New  Testament  did  not 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  SOCIAL  REFORM       225 

find  it,  because  he  brought  to  the  search  a  wrong  preconcep- 
tion of  the  Christian  method  of  reform,  which  is  to  work,  not 
by  laws  superimposed  from  without,  but  by  securing  the  im- 
planting and  vigorous  working  of  certain  indwelling  principles 
of  mighty  force  in  themselves,  and  powerfully  working  out  into 
the  institutions  and  forms  which  are  their  natural  embodiment. 
Christianity  introduced  into  human  life  certain  potent  truths 
which  had  in  them  the  virtue  and  the  prophecy  of  all  individual 
and  all  social  well-being. 

We  notice  first  the  divine  proclamation  of  the  infinite  worth 
of  man.  Before  the  incarnation  men  may  be  divided  into  two 
classes  as  respects  their  means  of  arriving  at  a  true  estimate  of 
man.  First,  the  mass  of  men,  who,  oppressed,  despised,  treated 
in  every  way  as  inferior  beings  by  those  above  them,  and  with- 
out even  any  deep  sense  of  wrong  in  being  so  treated,  could  not 
by  any  possibility  reach  any  adequate  sense  of  inherent  worth. 
Secondly,  the  few  whose  measure  of  their  own  merit  was  only 
their  superiority  to  those  whom  they  despised.  Here  was  no 
basis  for  any  true  conception  of  human  worth,  no  standard  by 
which  to  estimate  the  value  of  pure  simple  humanity.  Men 
of  low  degree  were  vanity  and  men  of  high  degree  were  a  lie. 
There  was  needed  some  superhuman  standard  to  which  human 
measures  could  be  referred.  The  incarnation  of  Christ  gave 
such  an  authoritative  statement  of  the  question.  It  was 
God's  testimony  to  the  worth  of  man.  It  said  to  all  worlds, 
and  all  beings,  and  most  significant  of  all,  it  said  to  man 
himself:  "This  is  no  paltry  being,  of  mean  origin,  and  small 
capacity  and  low  destiny,  but  a  being  of  such  high  quality 
and  such  noble  possibility  that  the  Most  High  can  afford  to 
stoop  and  the  ever  Blessed  One  to  suffer,  in  order  that  this 
being  may  be  enabled  to  realize  his  nature."  It  became  mani- 
fest that  if  God  can  enter  into  human  nature  and  be  sympa- 
thetic with  it,  it  can  only  be  because  it  is  a  god-like  nature,  with 
some  elements  akin  to  God,  some  affinities  to  the  divine.  It 
was  a  revelation  to  man  of  unsuspected  greatness  and  nobility. 

15 


226  THE  VERY  ELECT 

It  was  a  glimpse  of  possibilities  of  which  man  himself  would 
never  have  had  the  hardihood  even  to  dream.  It  was,  as  the 
Scripture  says,  the  bringing  in  of  a  new  hope,  by  which  hope 
the  Scripture  also  says,  he  is  saved.  The  personal  value  of 
the  incarnation  to  the  soul  of  man  can  never  be  over  empha- 
sized. But  as  a  reconstructing  social  force  it  is  an  equally  im- 
portant fact.  For  it  was  the  coming  of  God  into  universal 
humanity,  not  into  any  class  or  race  or  moral  grade,  but  into 
every  class,  into  all  races,  into  each  grade,  into  every  man. 
Thus  by  teaching  the  infinite  worth  of  man  as  man,  it  taught 
the  equality  of  all  men.  For  there  can  be  no  degree  in  in- 
finity. If  every  man  is  of  infinite  worth  in  God's  eyes,  all 
minor  distinctions  pale  before  the  simple  majesty  of  pure 
humanity.  In  a  minor  sense  of  the  word  men  are  not  equal. 
In  the  sense  of  the  French  clamor  for  liberty,  equality,  frater- 
nity, men  are  not  equal,  not  even  in  the  ideal  and  perfect 
state.  It  would  be  a  monotonous  universe,  were  it  so,  of  which 
God  himself  and  every  intelligence  would  tire.  But  as  all 
nations  are  equal  because  all  are  sovereign,  so  all  men,  being 
in  their  illimitable  destinies  all  of  infinite  worth  because  of 
the  essential  manhood  in  them  all,  are  in  such  sense  equal 
that  none  can  despise  any  and  each  must  reverence  all.  For 
the  first  time  in  human  history  man  was  taught  to  respect 
himself  as  man  without  any  regard  to  his  condition,  or  rather 
he  was  emboldened  to  claim  the  condition  which  becomes  a 
man.  "Ye  were  bought  with  a  price;  be  not  the  servants  of 
men."  All  barriers  between  race  and  race,  all  invidious  dis- 
tinctions of  origin,  of  sex,  of  circumstances,  were  forever 
cancelled  in  view  of  the  one  all-equalizing  fact  of  the  common 
relation  to  Christ  of  Greek  and  Jew,  bond  and  free,  male  and 
female.  Not  for  a  long  time  was  the  transforming  power  of 
this  new  social  force  realized — not  yet  is  it  fully  realized — 
but  it  is  this  force  and  no  other  which  has  brought  about 
and  is  bringing  about  the  social  revolution  which  has  raised 
so  many  millions  of  serfs  into  freemen,  has  brought  so  many 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM      227 

barbarians  within  the  pale  of  civilization,  has  lifted  women 
into  full  partnership  with  man  in  all  the  joys  and  duties  of 
redeemed  humanity,  and  all  through  the  relations  of  men  to 
each  other  has  pulled  down  the  mighty  from  their  undeserved 
seats  and  exalted  them  of  low  degree. 

Secondly,  the  common  possession  of  this  divine  humanity 
binds  men  into  a  fellowship  of  interest  and  sympathy.  It  is  a 
shallow  and  false  view  of  religion  that  it  is  solely  an  affair 
between  each  man  and  his  God.  From  its  very  nature  the 
Christian  faith  is  a  source  of  new  relations  between  man  and 
man.  One  of  the  marked  characteristics  of  paganism  is,  on 
the  one  side,  the  energy  of  the  tribal  and  racial  feeling,  and  on 
the  other  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  of  hatred  for  all  outside. 
It  was  indeed  said  by  them  of  old  time,  thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  and  hate  thine  enemy,  the  enemy  being  all  save  the 
neighbor.  The  very  term  we  employ  for  the  feeling  of  uni- 
versal love — philanthropy — meant  with  those  who  framed 
it,  a  feeling  which  was  limited  to  a  very  narrow  circle  of  equals. 
Even  the  Israelites  who  could  say:  "Come  thou  with  us  and 
we  will  do  thee  good,"  could  not  carry  good  or  send  good  to 
those  outside.  What  community  of  interest  was  there  in  the 
Pagan  or  the  Hebrew  conception  of  man,  which  could  have  been 
the  ground  of  a  community  of  affection  and  action?  But  with 
this  realization  of  the  divine  element  in  the  nature  of  every 
man,  whereby  Christ  is  potentially  in  every  man  the  hope  of 
glory,  lo  a  new  relationship  springs  up  between  every  man  and 
every  other  man,  a  reason  which  may  become  a  motive,  even 
a  passion  for  seeking  intimacy  and  union  with  all  others  who 
have  this  glorious  heritage.  Bring  together  on  a  three  months' 
voyage  a  hundred  men,  all  strangers  to  each  other,  and  those 
who  have  affinities  will  find  each  other  and  form  little  societies 
—the  thinkers  in  one  group,  the  politicians  in  another,  the 
artists  in  a  third;  those  only  who  have  no  human  interests  will 
remain  isolated.  Suppose  now  that  there  is  one  man  among 
them  who  has  a  new  idea,  some  broad  universal  idea  which 


228  THE  VERY  ELECT 

appeals  to  a  latent  but  common  interest  of  them  all, — and  sup- 
pose that  he  holds  it  with  energy  and  asserts  it  with  force. 
Now  all  the  little  groups  will  dissolve,  the  isolated  individuals 
will  come  together  and  all  will  flow  into  the  one  group  which 
represents  the  common  idea.  So  it  is  with  this  all-embracing, 
all-absorbing  idea  of  God  with  us.  It  is  in  every  man,  the 
divine  potentiality  of  every  human  soul.  It  draws  men 
irresistibly  together;  it  breaks  down  barriers  of  language, 
traditions,  institutions;  it  overleaps  wide  chasms  of  physical, 
intellectual  and  even  moral  disagreements,  and  prompts 
men  in  spite  of  them  to  rush  into  each  others'  arms.  A  man 
may  be  to  me  physically  degraded  and  repulsive;  no  matter. 
He  may  be  intellectually  so  far  my  inferior  that  he  cannot  share 
one  of  my  opinions,  nor  I  one  of  his  without  an  effort  of  con- 
descension; no  matter.  He  may  be  a  bad  man,  sordid,  hate- 
ful, cruel,  depraved;  still  no  matter.  All  these  things  are  but 
accidents  of  the  man;  they  are  not  essential  parts  of  him. 
He  may  be  brutal,  but  he  is  not  a  brute.  He  may  be  ignorant, 
but  he  may  have  the  capacities  of  a  philosopher;  he  may  be 
depraved  in  character,  but  his  nature  is  in  the  very  image  of 
God.  The  man,  the  essential  man  as  God  made  him,  and  as 
God's  holy  spirit  is  willing  to  remake  him,  is  of  the  same  in- 
finite worth  as  myself;  is  a  sharer  with  me  in  the  glory  of  the 
nature  which  Christ  has  taken  on  and  ever  wears.  If  I  have 
pain  and  sorrow  in  view  of  his  sins  and  the  degradation  they 
have  brought  on  him,  I  cannot  but  have  the  same  feeling  in 
view  of  my  own.  If  I  have  hope  for  myself,  for  my  future 
advancement  in  knowledge  and  holiness,  I  have  the  same  hope 
for  him.  In  Christ  we  are  one.  Our  differences  are  as  nothing 
to  our  common  opportunity  and  possibility. 

Now  no  doubt  the  first  effect  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
the  infinite  worth  of  each  man  has  been  to  promote  individual- 
ism, because  the  first  step  in  human  progress  was  to  break  up 
those  institutions  which  for  long  ages  had  deprived  man  of 
his  right  to  himself.  Caste,  civil  oppression,  and  we  must  add 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM       229 

the  church  itself  in  its  perversion  and  error,  slowly  gave  up 
to  the  individual  those  rights  and  dignities  which  Christianity 
had  secured  to  him,  so  that  the  assertion  and  exaggeration  of 
individualism  was  a  natural  process  in  the  evolution  of  Chris- 
tian society.  But  we  have  now  reached  a  point  at  which  it 
is  safe  to  relax  the  stress  which  former  ages  have  laid  upon 
individual  rights.  If  that  is  not  true  which  has  been  said  on 
one  side,  that  the  principle  of  individualism  has  accomplished 
all  that  it  is  capable  of  accomplishing  for  social  mankind, 
it  certainly  is  not  true  on  the  other  that  the  chief  duty  of  man 
is  now  to  stand  up  for  his  personal  rights.  Thinking  men 
are  not  now  looking  in  the  direction  of  a  further  developed 
individualism  for  the  bettering  of  man's  estate,  but  in  the 
direction  of  solidarity  of  interests,  mutuality  of  service,  union 
of  hearts  leading  to  co-operation  of  hands.  Amid  all  this  wild 
chaos  of  socialistic  scheming,  perhaps  in  spite  of  it,  men's 
minds  are  inclining  to  a  more  fraternal  conception  of  society, 
to  the  belief  that  men  are  not,  in  the  divine  plan,  left  to  work 
out  their  salvation,  temporal  or  spiritual,  singly  and  alone, 
but  that  society  is  a  divinely  constructed  whole  of  which  each 
individual  is  a  part,  and  that  as  he  is  dependent  on  the  integrity 
of  the  whole  for  his  personal  completeness,  so  he  is  bound  to 
contribute  through  the  whole  to  the  completeness  of  every 
other  part. 

III.  But  this  brings  us  naturally  to  the  third  principle 
which  Christianity  has  contributed  to  social  progress,  namely, 
the  supremacy  of  righteousness,  of  which  the  central  element 
is  love.  All  nature  religion  is  a  worship  of  power.  More 
or  less  of  the  notion  of  right  may  mingle  with  that  of  power, 
but  sovereignty  and  power  are  indissolubly  united.  Some 
later  as  well  as  earlier  theologies  enthrone  power.  All  cor- 
porate priesthoods  tend  that  way.  Authority  in  the  priest 
claims  to  represent  authority  in  God.  But  power,  authority, 
sovereignty,  are  not  ethical  ideas.  The  Supreme  Being,  the 
Almighty,  the  Lawgiver  of  the  Universe,  does  not  in  these 


230  THE  VERY  ELECT 

names  present  any  attributes  for  my  worship — only  for  my 
submission,  my  obedience,  my  fear.  Judaism  was  a  gradual 
process  of  instruction  in  the  supremacy  of  righteousness  and 
in  the  true  conception  of  righteousness.  But  it  was  reserved 
for  Christianity  to  make  full  announcement  and  exemplifica- 
tion of  the  truth  that  God  is  supreme  because  he  is  supremely 
good,  and  that  goodness  in  its  last  essence  is  love.  This  is 
the  greatest  of  all  truths  that  have  ever  been  revealed  to  man. 
It  is  indeed  the  greatest  of  all  possible  truths.  If  this  is  true 
all  else  is  provided  for.  If  this  is  not  true  the  universal  fir- 
mament is  rottenness.  It  is  perhaps  not  to  be  wondered  at 
that  men  come  so  slowly  to  the  apprehension  of  this  truth; 
that  good  men  are  afraid  of  it;  that  the  Church  too  often 
proclaims  it  with  a  "but,"  or  puts  it  into  a  foot  note.  Men 
come  slowly  to  realize  that  love,  divine  love  in  God  or  man, 
is  not  merely  emotional,  it  is  ethical,  it  is  holy,  it  is  all  aflame 
against  evil.  But  not  to  dwell  on  the  personal  aspects  of  this 
great  truth,  the  social  bearings  of  it  are  of  immeasurable  con- 
sequence. The  kingdom  of  God  is  the  rule  of  righteousness 
and  of  a  righteousness  which  is  something  more  than  the  right- 
eousness of  law,  of  precept,  of  technicalities  and  forms,  beget- 
ting Pharisaic  formalists  and  Sadducaic  skeptics,  a  righteous- 
ness which  abandons  the  mandate,  Thou  shalt  not  do  this 
and  that,  for  one  which  says,  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  heart  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 

Contrast  now,  as  a  basis  for  establishing  the  true  relations 
of  man  to  man,  the  pagan  idea  of  justice,  which  is  right  in  its 
legal  and  statutory  bearings,  with  the  Christian  idea  of  right- 
eousness, which  is  love  seeking  the  highest  and  holiest  estate 
of  all  being.  Justice,  law,  looks  down  from  its  height  upon  the 
doings  of  men,  interested  solely  in  their  misdeeds.  So  long 
as  men  do  not  offend  the  law,  justice  may  fold  its  arms  and 
sleep.  It  does  not  take  the  initiative  in  moral  progress.  It 
does  not  of  its  own  motion  devise  new  and  better  things  for 
men.  It  is  active  on  the  side  of  suppression — debellare  super- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  SOCIAL  REFORM       231 

bos,  but  passive  where  there  is  no  resistance — parcere  subjectis. 
But  evangelic  righteousness  is  of  a  different  temper.  It  looks 
upon  the  wrong-doer  as  not  so  much  a  fit  object  for  retribution 
as  a  fit  subject  for  reclamation.  It  is  within  the  compass 
of  ordinary  human  nature  to  feel  resentment  toward  the  sinner 
and  to  pity  the  miserable.  But  to  pity  the  sinner  not  mainly 
because  he  is  miserable  but  because  he  is  a  sinner ;  to  have  the 
intensest  hatred  for  sin  and  for  that  very  reason  to  regard 
the  sinner  with  infinite  pity — ah,  that  is  divine,  so  divine  that 
but  for  the  manifestation  of  it  in  Christ  we  never  should  have 
been  capable  of  it,  so  divine  that  we  are  only  slowly  climbing 
up  to  the  conception  of  it  with  long  ages  of  Christian  progress. 
And  more  than  this.  Righteousness  distresses  itself  not  only 
over  sin  but  also  over  weakness,  incompleteness,  imperfection. 
Righteousness  is  idealistic.  It  is  not  content  merely  to  rectify 
faults  in  the  domain  of  human  life;  it  aims  to  fill  it  out  till  it 
touches  all  the  meridians  and  all  the  parallels  of  its  extreme 
sphere.  Christian  love  looks  abroad  upon  the  doings  of  men, 
of  all  men,  of  all  men  alike,  and  its  heart  is  big  with  the  ques- 
tion, What  can  be  done  for  the  relief  of  man's  estate?  It  has 
already  done  much.  It  has  freed  slaves;  it  has  abolished 
caste;  it  has  lessened  and  mitigated  war;  it  has  substituted 
international  intercourse  for  barbaric  national  hatreds;  it 
has  greatly  lessened  the  distance  between  social  classes;  it 
has  distributed  a  large  share  of  the  benefits  and  blessings  of 
life  to  all  classes  except  the  lowest,  and  is  now  with  thought- 
ful brow  and  yearning  heart  bending  over  this  last  and  most 
difficult  problem,  how  to  lift  and  save  this  lowest  class.  Let 
no  man  say  that  the  social  influence  of  Christianity  has  not 
been  widespread,  beneficent,  effective.  But  Christianity  has 
as  yet  achieved  but  the  beginnings  of  what  it  contemplates. 
It  looks  for  greater  things  than  these.  It  looks  for  a  new 
earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness.  Good  men,  filled  with 
the  new  evangelic  spirit,  now  and  then  get  glimpses  of 
what  this  earth  might  be  and  shall  be  as  a  home  for  man, 


232  THE  VERY  ELECT 

when  the  principles  of  Christianity  shall  have  in  some  good 
degree  leavened  the  mass  of  human  society.  But  no  Utopia, 
no  New  Atlantis,  has  yet  foreshadowed  the  new  regime  which 
shall  be  when  Christianity  comes  forth  from  the  sanctuary 
and  the  closet  and  abides  with  men  all  the  day  in  the  sen- 
ate, in  the  forum,  in  the  factory  where  the  full  wages  of  the 
laborer  are  counted  out  to  him,  in  the  market-place  where 
buyers  and  sellers  are  both  gainers  by  every  bargain,  in  the 
wide  world  where  each  man  is  free  to  choose  the  calling  which 
best  befits  him  and  to  own  all  that  he  earns  in  it.  One  might 
be  pardoned  for  thinking  that  it  were  a  good  time  for  a  John 
the  Baptist  to  stand  again  before  the  people  and  for  each  occu- 
pation to  ask  him  again :  Master,  and  what  shall  we  do?  An 
interesting  and  beautiful  exhibition  of  the  Christian  spirit  in 
social  life  is  given  to  us  in  the  infant  church  at  Jerusalem  im- 
mediately after  the  first  great  religious  awakening,  as  we 
should  call  it — as  though  consequent  upon  that  awakening — 
the  communistic  life  of  the  early  disciples.  All  that  believed 
had  all  things  common.  It  is  all  told  in  a  few  words  and  then 
we  hear  no  more  of  it.  It  was  a  short-lived  community  soon 
ended  by  persecution  and  dispersion  and  by  the  natural  limita- 
tions of  such  a  condition.  But  coming  where  it  does,  and  told 
as  it  is,  it  is  very  suggestive  of  the  natural  effects  of  such  a  re- 
ligious awakening.  The  little  company  were  conscious  of  a 
supernatural  presence  among  them.  Their  minds  were  aglow 
with  new  feelings  which  drew  them  closely  together  in  a  new 
fellowship.  All  other  things  seemed  to  them  of  minor  impor- 
tance. To  converse  together,  to  pray  together,  to  break  bread 
from  house  to  house  in  memory  of  their  Lord,  this  seemed  to  be 
the  chief  business  of  life.  Land,  homes,  possessions  they  freely 
parted  with  in  order  that  this  high  spiritual  festival  might  be 
constant.  They  were  enjoying  the  luxury,  the  poetry  of  re- 
ligion. The  plain  prose,  the  necessary  daily  toil,  the  common 
duties  of  life,  the  arts  and  industries,  commerce  and  politics, 
they  were  content  to  forget.  If  some  one  had  asked  the  apostle 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM       233 

whether  this  was  to  be  the  permanent  condition  of  the  Chris- 
tian life,  whether  this  was  the  social  organization  of  the  new 
order,  he  would  probably  have  answered:  "In  form  certainly 
not.  This  is  not  the  Christian  commonwealth.  The  conditions 
of  it  are  not  present  in  this  little  band  of  believers.  Whatever 
it  is  to  be,  it  cannot  be  extemporized  out  of  new-born  religious 
enthusiasm.  By  slow  processes,  through  ages  of  experiment, 
it  must  gather  its  materials,  mature  its  agencies,  adjust  its 
means  and  ends,  and  so  perfect  its  form.  But  the  spirit  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  indubitably  here.  Here  are  souls  sud- 
denly become  conscious  of  their  own  worth  and  of  that  of  all 
souls,  and  exultant  in  the  discovery.  Through  their  common 
consciousness  of  this  common  spiritual  nature  they  are  drawn 
together  in  sympathy  and  confidence.  The  wants  of  each 
are  the  care  of  all,  and  the  good  of  each  is  the  ambition  of  all. 
Give  these  principles  permanent  instead  of  temporary  con- 
ditions, and  let  them  work  out  naturally  into  laws,  institu- 
tions, customs,  and  you  have  the  Christian  social  life. 

We  are  now  nineteen  centuries  distant  from  that  first  out- 
come of  social  Christianity,  and  men  are  talking  in  our  times 
as  if  society  still  needed  reconstruction.  Much  of  the  drift  of 
current  discussion  assumes  that  things  are  all  wrong;  that  hu- 
man life  on  its  social  side  needs  to  be  created  de  novo',  and  many 
self-constituted  social  reformers  are  constructing  a  new  order 
out  of  their  inner  consciousness.  It  is  one  of  the  fashions  of 
the  times  to  create  new  social  systems,  usually  with  bland 
indifference  to  Christianity,  which  is  really  the  source  of  all 
that  is  of  any  worth  in  these  various  systems.  The  fact  is 
ignored  that  society  has  already  been  reconstructed,  divinely 
reconstructed;  that  throughout  Christendom  the  old  pagan 
order  has  been  superseded,  and  the  Christian  conception 
of  society  put  into  operation.  The  process  is  incomplete  and 
in  some  departments  of  life  hardly  more  than  fairly  begun. 
But  the  tendencies  are  in  the  right  direction.  The  Christian 
world  is  in  the  condition  of  an  inventor  who  has  got  hold  of  a 


234  THE  VERY  ELECT 

valuable  mechanical  principle  which  with  alternating  successes 
and  failures  he  is  laboring  to  embody  in  a  practical  machine. 
The  Redeemer  of  human  society  having  given  to  mankind 
certain  great  organizing  truths  and  principles,  has  left  to  men 
the  task  of  working  them  out  into  their  practical  details. 
Every  new  appreciation  of  the  real  meaning  of  these  principles, 
every  accession  of  faith  in  them,  is  sure  to  be  followed  by  new 
advances  in  social  well-being.  Every  general  spiritual  awaken- 
ing, such  as  the  Reformation,  the  rise  of  Methodism,  the  recent 
revival  of  biblical  study,  naturally  brings  an  increased  thought- 
fulness,  a  more  fraternal  spirit,  an  enthusiasm  of  philanthropy, 
in  regard  to  man's  social  relations.  If  the  controversies  now 
going  on  in  most  of  the  churches,  melancholy  though  they 
seem,  result  in  any  real  gain  to  the  apprehension  of  vital  reli- 
gious truth,  then  we  may  be  sure  that  men's  homes  and  busi- 
ness, that  politics  and  economics,  the  arts  and  industries  will 
share  in  the  resultant  good.  Society  does  not  need  revolu- 
tion; it  needs  further  development  of  the  principles  of  its  true 
life.  It  is  imperfect;  it  tolerates  many  abuses;  it  groans  under 
many  grievous  wrongs;  but  all  this  is  because  men  do  not 
yet  fully  believe  and  practise  the  three  great  Christian  social 
principles:  the  infinite  worth  of  every  man;  the  solidarity 
of  all  men  in  Christ;  the  supremacy  of  righteousness  conceived 
as  love.  No  mere  social  legislation,  no  organization  of  men 
into  industrial  hierarchies,  no  mere  social  constitution  and 
by-laws  will  bring  about  the  new  Christian  social  regime — 
only  the  amplification  into  all  the  details  of  life  of  the  great 
divine  principles  which  gave  to  the  new  regime  its  birth  and 
character. 

This  discussion  leads  to  two  practical  conclusions.  The 
first  answers  the  question  as  to  the  true  attitude  of  the  Church 
toward  social  reforms.  Should  the  Church  assume  the  leader- 
ship in  such  reform?  Very  manifestly  into  the  details  of 
public  activities  the  Church  cannot  go.  The  Church,  as  the 
Church,  clad  in  her  official  robes  and  speaking  with  divine 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    SOCIAL    REFORM     235 

authority,  must  not  go  into  caucuses,  courts  and  senates.  She 
must  not  assume  to  regulate  labor  unions,  to  control  social 
or  political  movements  by  a  syllabus  or  a  pastoral  epistle. 
But  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  Church  ought  to  put  itself 
forward  as  the  leader  in  social  reforms,  because  it  alone  has 
the  true  principles  which  should  actuate  such  reforms.  The 
Church  is  the  divinely  appointed  conservator  and  propagator 
of  these  principles.  The  great  failures  of  the  Church  in  the 
past  have  been  due  not  so  much  to  her  positive  errors  as  to 
her  want  of  fidelity  to  some  one  or  all  of  the  great  truths 
through  which  the  founder  of  the  kingdom  of  God  designed  to 
reconstruct  human  society.  She  has  not  always  with  self- 
denying  and  humble  zeal  proclaimed  the  infinite  worth  of  every 
human  soul,  the  brotherhood  of  all  men  in  Christ,  and  the 
supreme  motive  of  love.  At  one  time  she  has  courted  the 
rich  and  noble  and  forgotten  the  right  of  the  poor  and  hum- 
ble. At  another  she  has  outlawed  those  who  would  not  con- 
form to  her  rigid  discipline  and  has  set  up  a  rule  of  power  and 
authority  in  place  of  the  supremacy  of  love.  Let  the  Church 
but  be  true  to  her  own  divine  mission,  let  her  teach  and 
exemplify  the  great  principles  of  Christ's  kingdom  and  her 
main  work  for  society  will  have  been  performed.  And  it  will 
be  a  mighty  work,  a  work  large  enough  to  occupy  all  the  ener- 
gies of  her  ministers,  a  work  which  if  left  undone  no  other 
agency  can  supplement,  a  work  which  well  done  will  make 
easy  and  effectual  the  complementary  work  of  all  other 
human  agencies. 

The  second  corollary  is  the  need  society  has  of  Christian 
leadership.  In  great  crises  everything  depends  on  the  incli- 
nation of  the  people  to  choose  as  their  leaders,  Robespierre 
and  Napoleon,  or  Washington  and  Lincoln.  For  the  men  who 
mould  society  and  shape  institutions  are  the  few  thinking, 
daring  men  who  have  this  capacity  of  leadership,  and  rarely 
if  ever  has  our  country  had  greater  need  of  statesmen,  jurists, 
magistrates,  writers,  than  in  our  day  when  these  great  social 


236  THE  VERY  ELECT 

questions  are  in  process  of  solution.  The  term  Christian 
statesman  unfortunately  has  been  degraded  by  its  applications, 
but  what  that  term  means  apart  from  all  cant  and  pretense, 
is  what  the  world  most  needs  today — men  who  are  profoundly 
versed  in  the  jural  and  moral  principles  of  Christianity,  men 
whose  aim  is  to  re-enact  and  exemplify  them  in  human  laws 
and  institutions.  The  greatest  opportunities  which  the  world 
now  offers  to  men  of  large  gifts  and  powers  are  in  direct  line 
with  the  work  of  him  who  is  the  prototype  and  exemplar  of 
all  true  reformers,  the  Redeemer  of  mankind.  Society,  I 
say  again,  does  not  need  to  be  revolutionized,  but  it  does  need 
to  be  redeemed — to  be  redeemed  from  the  remains  of  paganism, 
from  unworthy  views  of  humanity,  from  the  selfish  isolation 
of  classes,  from  the  enthronement  of  power,  from  the  worship 
of  success,  from  all  those  wrongs  and  evils  of  which  men 
must  repent  in  order  that  the  new  regime,  the  kingdom  of 
God,  which  was  at  hand,  and  is  now  come,  may  come  fully 
and  with  power. 

ADDEESS  TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS 

It  must  be  plain  to  every  observer  of  present  tendencies 
that  the  coming  questions  are  to  be  social  questions.  I  do 
not  mean  that  we  are  to  expect  great  revolutionary  move- 
ments in  society.  But  that  there  will  be  abundant  social 
ferment,  that  revolutionary  schemes  will  be  proposed  and 
discussed  and  to  some  extent  tried,  and  that  as  in  scrip- 
ture times  men  will  seek  to  become  famous  by  lifting 
up  their  axes  upon  the  thick  trees  of  existing  institu- 
tions, all  signs  indicate.  Now  it  would  be  conceit  to  im- 
ply that  every  college  graduate  is  going  to  be  a  power  in 
social  reform,  but  it  is  no  unreasonable  demand  upon 
educated  men  and  women  that  they  have  sober,  intelli- 
gent views  upon  great  questions  of  public  interest,  and  espe- 
cially that  they  be  prepared  to  think  their  way  calmly  through 
the  great  practical  problems  which  will  from  time  to  time 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM       237 

confront  them.  One  great  peril  of  such  times  as  ours  is  dema- 
gogism,  that  thoroughly  selfish  spirit  masquerading  as  philan- 
thropy, which  out  of  one  real  grievance  agitates  a  hundred 
fictitious  ones,  and  then  hitches  its  private  wagon  to  the 
movement  which  such  agitation  has  created.  In  this  way  the 
one  real  grievance  gets  buried  out  of  sight,  the  real  friends  of 
the  good  cause  are  antagonized  by  its  false  friends,  and  the 
reform  gets  into  the  hands  of  the  baser  sort  who  turn  it  into 
a  private  intrigue  for  pelf  and  power.  And  yet  no  worse  evil 
can  happen  to  society  than  the  prevalence  among  good  men 
of  a  spirit  of  disgust  toward  public  affairs  induced  by  the 
temporary  success  of  demagogism.  Reaction  into  excessive 
conservatism,  though  natural,  would  be  one  of  the  worst 
results  of  this  condition  of  things.  Let  me  urge  upon  you  as 
the  duty  of  every  educated  person  to  be  in  active  sympathy 
with  every  movement  which  upon  natural,  historic,  and  Chris- 
tian considerations,  promises  richly  for  the  improvement  of 
society.  Do  not  be  easily  disgusted  or  daunted  or  cajoled 
into  letting  bad  men  and  bad  things  have  their  own  way; 
especially  avoid  the  danger  of  the  scholarly  temper,  that  of 
being  warped  by  fanaticism  into  cynicism.  For  while  the 
demagogue  is  only  a  nuisance  to  be  abated  or  a  species  to  be 
exterminated,  the  fanatic  is  a  being  of  whom  the  wise  man  can 
learn,  and  whom  he  can  often  turn  to  good  use. 

But  as  the  greatest  of  all  perils  to  be  dreaded  for  the  future 
is  the  absence  of  the  Christian  spirit  and  Christian  principles 
in  the  adjustment  of  human  relations,  so  the  greatest  of  all 
opportunities  and  obligations  is  that  of  getting  these  principles 
incorporated  more  and  more  into  the  constitution  of  society. 
The  new  regime,  the  Christian  commonwealth  that  is  to  be, 
will  not  be  identical  with  the  Church,  but  it  will  be  as  thor- 
oughly Christian  as  the  Church — as  true  to  Christ's  spirit 
and  teaching  in  its  sphere  as  the  Church  in  hers.  The  Puritan 
was  not  far  wrong.  The  man  whose  public  action  is  not  con- 
trolled by  the  principles  of  Christianity  is  not  competent  to 


238  THE  VERY  ELECT 

legislate  for  the  Christian  commonwealth — for  that  is  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  Christianity  formulated  into  civil  and  social 
institutions. 

Let  me  now  in  closing  entertain  the  thought  on  which  we 
have  been  dwelling  over  the  whole  domain  of  life.  The  apostle 
said  "for  me  to  live  is  Christ."  We  have  no  right  to  solve  any 
problem,  to  decide  any  great  question,  to  live  any  part  of  our 
life,  without  bringing  Christianity  to  bear  upon  everything. 
You  have  found  how  every  question  of  scholarship,  every  prob- 
lem of  science,  however  remote  at  the  start,  always  runs  on 
into  a  religious  question.  You  cannot  settle  anything  right, 
certainly  not  any  matter  which  has  a  human  element  in  it, 
without  calling  in  that  divine-human  standard  of  judgment 
which  the  gospel  brings  to  us.  Be  thankful  that  religion 
comes  to  you  today  in  this  human  appeal;  that  it  recognizes 
every  side  of  your  being;  that  it  respects  the  privacy  and  sanc- 
tity of  your  individual  personality;  and  that  more  and  more 
it  invites  you  into  the  enjoyment  and  realization  of  that  larger 
humanity  which  you  share  with  all  the  sons  of  God,  and  with 
the  Son  of  God.  This  is  your  high  calling  and  election:  give 
all  diligence  to  make  it  pure. 


THE    RELIGIOUS    ESTIMATE    OF    LIFE 

All  thy  estimations  shall  be  according  to  the  shekel  of  the  sanctuary. 

Lev.  xxvii:  25. 

THE  center  of  the  Mosaic  system,  both  as  a  worship  and  a 
polity,  was  the  sanctuary,  that  is,  the  divine  presence.  From 
the  day  of  the  Exodus  the  Hebrews  were  a  people  grouped 
about  a  Holy  Place.  Forth  from  this  central  spot,  forth  from 
this  central  idea,  radiated  all  their  activities  and  all  their 
institutions:  hence  came  their  morality,  their  legislation,  their 
ritual,  their  domestic  and  national  life.  The  test  of  upright- 
ness was  to  be  fit  to  " stand  in  the  Holy  Place";  the  safeguard 
against  calamity  was,  "if  thy  presence  go  not  with  us,  carry 
us  not  up  hence";  deliverance  in  trouble  was,  "the  Lord  send 
thee  help  from  the  sanctuary" ;  in  order  to  be  just,  not  approxi- 
mately, but  scrupulously,  religiously,  exact  in  all  weights  and 
measures,  in  all  valuations  and  judgments,  "let  all  your  esti- 
mations be  according  to  the  shekel  of  the  sanctuary." 

Is  not  this  one  of  those  things,  said  by  them  of  old  time, 
which  our  Lord  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil;  not  to  destroy, 
because  the  principle  of  it  is  of  perpetual  validity;  but  to  ful- 
fil, because  it  has  infinite  power  of  expansion  and  adaptation? 
That  the  highest  standards  are  those  which  have  the  sanction 
of  religion,  that  the  values  put  upon  human  life  and  all  things 
great  and  small  pertaining  thereto,  are  most  just  and  most 
true  when  they  are  estimated  as  in  the  presence  of  God, — 
this  is  a  truth  which  can  never  grow  old,  which  only  becomes 
more  full  of  meaning  as  life  becomes  broader  and  deeper  and 
richer.  No  longer  is  the  divine  presence  symbolized  in  a 
material  sanctuary,  no  longer  are  all  but  the  priest  excluded 
from  the  holy  place.  Since  Christ  came  the  glory  of  God 
bursts  through  the  veil  and  floods  and  hallows  the  whole 

239 


240  THE  VERY  ELECT 

earth,  and  every  place  is  holy  where  a  Christian  stands  face 
to  face  with  God.  But  still  and  always  the  shekel  of  the 
sanctuary,  the  divine  valuation,  the  estimate  which  God  puts 
upon  mortal  thoughts  and  acts,  and  which  we  put  upon  them 
when  we  are  consciously  in  his  immediate  presence  and  in 
closest  sympathy  with  him,  this  is  for  us,  and  for  all  beings 
in  all  the  earth  and  in  all  the  universe,  the  only  safe,  the  only 
wise,  the  most  nearly  infallible,  standard  of  action,  of  character, 
of  life.  The  true  man,  the  Christian  man,  weighs  and  measures 
life  not  according  to  the  shekel  of  the  shop,  or  of  the  exchange, 
or  of  the  laboratory;  not  by  the  standards  of  class,  or  school, 
or  sect;  not  by  the  prevalent  tone  of  literature,  or  science,  or 
philosophy ;  not  by  the  dictates  of  the  time-spirit  or  the  world- 
spirit  ;  but  in  accordance  with  the  best  and  highest  conception 
of  the  human  life  divine  which  he  gets  when  he  enters  into  the 
holy  place  and  sees  all  things  in  the  light  of  God. 

It  is  not  claimed,  it  would  be  historically  false  to  maintain, 
that  religious  standards,  are,  simply  because  they  are  religious, 
necessarily  true  to  the  eternal  and  immutable  verities.  In  all 
ages  men  have  infused  their  own  passions  into  their  religious 
beliefs  and  practices.  They  have  unconsciously  and  indis- 
criminately incorporated  with  their  religions  their  philosophies 
and  sciences,  their  patriotism  and  poetry;  nor  have  we  any 
right  to  assume  that  these  tendencies  of  human  nature  have 
ceased  to  assert  themselves.  The  religion  of  Christianity, 
we  may  fairly  claim,  cannot  be  easily  perverted  to  the  support 
of  pious  frauds,  and  cruelty  and  oppression;  and  yet  we  well 
know  that  its  holy  garb  and  its  heavenly  language  have  too 
often  been  borrowed  to  give  sanction  to  the  worst  wrongs 
humanity  has  suffered.  Men  and  churches  assuming  to  ad- 
minister morality  according  to  the  shekel  of  the  Christian 
sanctuary  have  done  more  than  anything  but  religion  could  do 
to  degrade  the  common  standards  of  life  and  to  corrupt  moral- 
ity at  its  source.  But  let  anyone,  saddened  and  humiliated 
though  he  is  by  a  historic  survey  of  Christian  morality,  in  a 


THE  RELIGIOUS   ESTIMATE   OF  LIFE        241 

spirit  of  fairness  consider  this  question:  What  influence  has 
counteracted  and  gradually  corrected  these  low  and  false 
standards  of  life?  What  influence  throughout  Christendom 
is  slowly  but  surely  elevating  these  standards  to  what  they 
are  in  the  best  communities,  and  are  sure  in  time  to  be  every- 
where? And  would  not  the  answer  be  that  it  is  religion,  a 
purer  Christianity  and  more  of  it,  more  and  more  entering  into 
and  controlling  individual  and  corporate  life?  Or  even  if  some 
should  claim,  as  they  well  might,  that  this  elevation  of  the 
moral  standard  is  due  in  part  to  the  finer  discernment  which 
comes  with  intellectual  activity,  to  the  superior  range  and 
accuracy  of  intelligence,  and  to  the  general  progression  of 
thought,  the  question  returns, — to  what  is  this  progress  itself 
due  but  to  the  inspiration  and  enlargement  which  come  from 
the  religious  view  of  life  and  man,  from  the  Christian  outlook 
upon  the  infinity  of  truth  and  the  capabilities  and  destiny 
of  man,  the  heir  in  Christ  of  all  the  infinities?  In  proportion 
as  men  appreciate  more  and  more  the  capabilities  of  life,  and 
get  higher  conceptions  of  its  possibilities,  they  come  to  depend 
more  and  more  on  religious  agencies  for  the  realization  of  their 
ideals.  In  what  direction  are  men  now  looking  for  the  forces 
which  shall  regenerate  modern  society,  in  great  cities,  in  pagan 
lands,  in  social  ethics?  As  men  throughout  Christendom  are 
coming  to  the  conviction  that  humanity  is  ripening  for  a  great 
advance  in  its  moral  and  social  condition,  where  do  they  look 
for  that  new  standard,  that  new  humanity,  the  humanity  that 
is  to  be,  but  to  religion,  to  those  Christian  conceptions  of 
character  and  life  which  alone  fill  the  aspirations  of  the  leaders 
and  prophets  of  our  time? 

I.  The  religious  estimation  of  life  implies,  in  the  first  place, 
that  we  estimate  all  things  according  to  a  religious  standard; 
not  some  things,  not  merely  so-called  sacred  things,  not  merely 
the  parts  and  persons,  and  offices  of  the  sanctuary,  but  that 
all  things  are  to  be  brought  into  the  sanctuary  for  estimation. 
The  great  religious  error  of  mankind  in  all  ages  has  been  that 

16 


242  THE  VERY-  ELECT 

they  have  put  a  religious  estimate  upon  certain  things  and 
failed  or  refused  to  put  it  upon  others,  and  so  have  lost  the  true 
relative  est'mate  of  all  things.  They  bring  to  the  sanctuary 
certain  opinions,  certain  sentiments,  certain  actions,  which 
they  submit  to  the  prescribed  test,  but  reserve  other  opinions, 
sentiments  and  acts  as  their  private  affairs.  They  assent  to  a 
certain  amount  of  dictation,  with  which  conviction  more  or 
less  coincides,  they  acquiesce  in  a  certain  amount  of  regula- 
tion and  restraint  of  their  lives,  for  which  they  take  compensa- 
tion in  that  part  of  life  which  religion  is  not  permitted  to 
invade.  It  is  not  the  caricature,  it  is  only  the  extreme  of  this 
form  of  religion,  when  we  see  the  Italian  brigand  vowing  a  share 
of  his  plunder  to  the  Virgin  with  the  tacit  understanding  that 
she  shall  sanctify  and  bless  the  remainder.  I  am  speaking,  of 
course,  of  what  men  do  unconsciously  and  in  greater  or  less 
degree,  but  of  what  we  are  all  prone  to  do  in  some  degree. 
Perhaps  we  put  under  religious  judgment  our  Sundays  but  not 
our  Mondays;  our  prayers  but  not  our  tempers;  our  alms  but 
not  our  charities.  St.  James  speaks  disparagingly  of  one  who 
seemeth  to  be  religious  and  bridleth  not  his  tongue.  There 
used  to  be  an  old  phrase,  perhaps  not  yet  quite  obsolete, — 
"to  enter  into  religion,"  meaning  to  enter  a  cloister,  when  it 
ought  to  have  meant  to  enter  into  a  full  human  life.  The 
separation  of  religion  from  the  whole  of  life  into  any  mere 
part  of  it  tends  to  make  religion  morbid  and  life  godless, — 
and  even  in  the  best  man  tends  to  give  to  religion  a  feverish 
and  hectic  intensity,  and  to  all  the  rest  of  life  a  dull  practicality. 
It  is  well  to  make  religion  prominent  by  giving  up  to  its  ex- 
clusive honor  and  use  special  days,  special  places,  the  services 
of  a  special  order  of  men;  but  this  is  not  in  order  to  isolate 
it  from  the  common  plane  of  life,  but  rather  the  more  effect- 
ually to  extend  its  influence  to  all  times,  all  places  and  all  men. 
II.  This  religious  estimate  of  life,  in  the  second  place,  gives 
us  the  true  valuation  of  all  things.  The  merely  secular  view  of 
life,  or  of  anything  pertaining  to  life,  is  false  because  it  is 


THE  RELIGIOUS  ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE       243 

incomplete.  It  is  too  limited,  both  as  to  space  and  time,  to 
include  the  right  relations  of  things.  It  does  not  afford 
parallax  enough  to  give  a  view  on  many  sides.  The  impression 
we  get  of  the  Adirondack  mountains  as  seen  from  this  point 
alone,  the  impression  one  might  have  got  of  the  relations  of 
Venus  and  Jupiter  as  seen  on  the  evening  of  March  10,  are 
false  impressions.  To  get  the  right  impressions,  one  must  see 
the  mountains  from  a  balloon,  and  the  planets  from  the  sun. 
To  see  human  life  as  it  is  in  all  its  variety  and  reach  and  space, 
we  must  see  it  from  above,  that  is,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
God  himself.  We  must  transport  ourselves  to  his  position, 
that  is,  speaking  practically,  we  must  get  into  sympathy 
with  his  mind  and  will,  in  order  that  we  may  see  things  as  he 
does.  The  Psalmist  was  greatly  perplexed  by  one  of  the  vexing 
problems  of  life.  He  could  not  understand  why  the  good  were 
so  often  unhappy  and  the  bad  happy,  and  the  more  he  thought 
upon  it  the  more  painful  his  thoughts  became,  until  he  went 
into  the  sanctuary  of  God,  and  then  he  understood.  He  had 
been  estimating  life  by  the  secular  standard.  When  he  came 
under  the  influence  of  the  sanctuary  he  found  himself  weighing 
happiness  with  a  truer  shekel.  He  saw,  what  we  might  wish 
every  man  might  see,  that  the  reality  of  happiness  is  better 
than  its  false  shows;  that  money  and  place  and  power  and  the 
admiration  of  all  eyes  are  good  only  relatively,  only  if  they  can 
be  had  without  costing  too  much,  but  are  no  compensation 
for  sorrow  and  pain,  for  heart-ache  and  a  remorseful  con- 
science; whereas  peace  of  mind,  an  approving  heart,  the  love 
of  friends  whom  one  has  helped,  and  the  favor  of  God,  are 
good  absolutely;  which  nothing  but  goodness  can  merit,  and 
which  no  calamities  can  abolish  or  destroy. 

I  have  seen  a  young  man  stand  in  all  the  unconscious  beauty 
and  glory  of  his  young  manhood;  erect,  as  knowing  nothing 
to  be  ashamed  of,  open-eyed,  frank,  smiling  upon  the  future; 
his  strength  as  the  strength  of  ten,  because  his  heart  was  pure; 
and  I  have  seen  the  admiration  of  men  and  women  centering 


244  THE  VERY  ELECT 

upon  him,  blessing  him,  cheering  him  on  into  his  career,  not 
because  they  foresaw  that  he  would  be  rich,  or  famous,  or 
powerful  (though  they  would  be  glad  that  he  should  be  all 
these),  but  because  they  saw  that  he  had  a  noble  idea  of  life, 
that  he  set  a  higher  value  on  the  higher  things  of  an  earthly 
career,  and  would  not  be  bribed,  as  perhaps  they  themselves 
had  been,  by  the  sordid  and  ignoble  successes  of  life  to  forego 
its  real  prizes  and  achievements.  The  splendor  for  which  we 
sometimes  envy  men  is  often  to  them  their  misery;  while  we 
are  envying  them  they  are  envying  us.  The  only  good  which 
is  satisfying  and  abiding  is  that  which  we  can  take  into  the 
sanctuary,  and  which  will  endure  its  tests.  "Be  a  good  man," 
said  Walter  Scott  in  his  last  hours  to  Lockhart,  "  nothing  else 
will  be  of  any  use  when  you  come  here."  Long  before  this 
he  had  put  the  same  thought  into  the  mouth  of  the  Scottish 
maiden  in  her  address  to  Queen  Caroline.  It  is  the  appeal 
which  the  nobler  minds  are  always  making  from  the  glamours 
to  the  realities  of  life,  from  the  judgment  of  the  world  to  the 
judgment  of  the  sanctuary.  Even  the  judgment  of  the  world, 
we  may  thankfully  believe,  is  slowly  rising  toward  an  apprecia- 
tion of  that  which  is  truly  admirable  and  beautiful  in  life, 
and  we  are  ever  and  anon  startled  to  see  how  the  world  recog- 
nizes and  applauds  its  real  heroes ;  but  the  true  Christian  spirit 
is  still,  as  it  has  always  been,  the  unworldly  spirit,  the  spirit 
which  estimates  life  not  by  its  prosperity  but  by  its  worth. 
The  ordinary  current  judgment  of  men  upon  each  other  is  of 
superficial  measurement  only,  it  uses  no  astrolabes  and  no 
plummets,  it  has  no  power  of  measuring  heights  and  depths. 
But  to  the  young  man  whose  ideal  of  life  is  still  in  the  making 
there  comes  the  unfailing  vision  of  every  true  poet,  the  aspira- 
tion of  every  good  man  in  his  hours  of  exaltation,  the  unceas- 
ing cry  of  the  prophet:  "Beware  of  all  these  estimates  of  life 
which  limit  it  to  things  material  and  temporal;  which  are  false 
because  they  are  low;  which  leave  out  all  its  nobilities  and 
heroisms;  which  applaud  gilded  vice  and  scorn  humble  virtue; 


THE  RELIGIOUS  ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE        245 

which  call  evil  good  if  it  is  successful,  and  good  evil  if  it  fails." 
Bring  all  things  to  the  test  of  the  sanctuary.  Judge  as  in  the 
presence  of  God,  and  in  the  light  of  God:  see  that  the  most 
enviable  life  is  the  noblest,  that  the  supreme  good  in  this  world, 
or  in  any  world,  is  to  be  good,  and  that  in  order  to  be  good  one 
must  be  fit  to  stand,  and  must  stand  always  in  the  holy  place. 

III.  Again,  the  religious  estimate  of  life  tends  to  elevate  its 
aims  and  motives.  The  plane  of  a  man's  life  is  determined 
by  his  practical  answer  to  the  question:  "What  does  life  afford 
which  is  most  worth  striving  for?  What  of  all  attainable  ob- 
jects best  repays  toil  and  sacrifice?"  Stand  at  the  street 
corner  and  compel  every  man  as  he  passes  to  answer  this 
question,  and  you  have  got  the  secret  of  his  life.  The  motive 
of  life  determines  the  plane  of  life.  A  sordid,  self-seeking 
motive  governing  one's  life  keeps  that  life  moving  on  a  certain 
low  level,  above  which  it  cannot  rise,  no  matter  how  gorgeous 
are  the  circumstances  which  attend  it  on  that  level.  A  re- 
ligion controlling  the  life  by  unselfish  motives  lifts  that  life 
into  an  elevation  and  dignity  from  which  no  circumstances, 
however  adverse,  can  lower  it. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  of  late  over  the  higher 
education,  whether  it  is  succeeding  or  failing  in  the  object 
of  education;  and  in  certain  quarters  it  is  discredited  because 
it  does  not,  so  it  is  said,  turn  out  a  larger  number  of  conspicu- 
ously successful  men  of  business.  If  the  charge  had  been  that 
the  colleges  do  not  foster  those  sciences  and  cultivate  those 
powers  of  invention  and  enterprise  by  which  the  arts  of  life 
are  improved,  and  communities  are  enriched,  and  mankind' 
is  advanced  materially  and  morally,  the  charge  would  have 
some  meaning;  though  it  would  be  totally  unfounded,  for  who 
does  not  know  that  the  world  is  indebted  to  institutions  of 
learning  for  the  scientific  spirit  out  of  which  all  modern  in- 
ventions have  come,  and  who  doubts  that  a  century  void  of 
new  learning  would  be  a  century  barren  of  all  material  progress? 
But  when  the  colleges  are  challenged  because  their  rolls  of 


246  THE  VERY  ELECT 

graduates  contain  few  millionaires, — without  joining  the  hue 
and  cry  against  millionaires,  without  denying  that  the  mil- 
lionaire in  the  present  organization  of  industry  has  an  impor- 
tant and  a  potentially  beneficent  place,  we  beg  leave  to  scan 
this  roll  of  college  graduates  and  ask  what  they  are  accom- 
plishing. If  we  had  taught  them  that  the  highest  aim  in 
life  is  to  get  wealth,  and  had  trained  them  for  that  end,  and 
had  sent  them  out  consecrated  to  that  one  ambition,  and  they 
had  in  most  cases  failed  to  realize  their  hopes  and  ours,  then 
our  critics  might  have  called  upon  us  to  modify  our  curriculum, 
and  to  give  place  to  what  they  consider  more  practical  systems 
of  education.  But  be  it  to  our  credit  or  our  discredit  in  the 
great  world,  we  of  the  colleges  measure  success  according  to 
the  shekel  of  the  sanctuary.  We  do  not  undervalue  material 
wealth.  We  have  no  Manichsean  suspicion  against  it.  We 
even  rejoice  when  we  see  it  pouring  into  our  own  coffers. 
We  know  well  the  advantages  it  brings  to  all  the  higher  enter- 
prises of  life.  We  claim  to  have  had  indirectly  a  large  share 
in  producing  the  wealth  which  others  despise  us  for  not  pos- 
sessing. But  when  we  are  taunted  with  having  so  little  of 
this  wealth  wherewith  to  serve  the  higher  ends  of  life,  we  are 
not  downcast,  provided  we  are  really  serving  these  higher 
ends  in  some  other  way.  What  are  colleges  over  the  country 
now  doing?  If  they  are  not  producing  wealth,  are  they  pro- 
ducing something  else  equally  important  to  human  welfare, 
possibly  more  important?  An  influential  class,  because  an 
educated  class,  are  they  as  a  class  exerting  their  influence  in 
behalf  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  elevation  of  the  communities 
amid  which  they  live?  Does  their  example,  do  their  words 
and  deeds  make  for  virtue,  for  private  and  public  morality, 
for  purity  and  order,  for  political  integrity,  for  Christlike 
charity  and  pure  religion?  Are  they  in  their  communities 
the  champions  of  struggling  but  righteous  causes,  the  mainstay 
of  noble  enterprises,  the  valiant  and  fearless  friends  of  all  true 
reforms?  Can  they  be  relied  on  when  need  comes,  as  come  it 


THE  RELIGIOUS  ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE       247 

must,  to  fight  manfully  against  the  combined  forces  of  mam- 
monism  and  the  time-spirit,  against  the  world,  the  flesh  and 
the  devil,  in  behalf  of  the  things  of  the  soul  and  of  the  nobler 
life,  and  so  help  to  keep  the  standard  of  common  life  from  trail- 
ing in  the  mire  of  animalism?  I  do  not  claim  for  college  men 
that  as  a  whole,  or  as  a  class,  they  come  up  to  this  high  stand- 
ard. I  only  claim  that  this  is  the  standard  according  to 
which  they  have  been  trained,  and  by  which  they  ought  to  be 
judged.  I  believe,  and  am  devoutly  thankful  to  believe,  that 
the  shekel  of  the  college  is  a  spiritual  shekel,  as  truly  as  is  that 
of  the  Church,  and  that  in  this  estimation  of  life  the  college 
and  the  Church  are  one,  and  that  their  combined  and  con- 
current valuation  of  life  is  more  and  more  influencing  the 
world's  valuations.  When  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  leaves  an  estate  hardly  sufficient  to  pay 
his  funeral  expenses,  when  a  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  leaves 
his  widow  dependent  on  the  contributions  of  friends,  though 
nothing  but  the  purest  sense  of  official  honor  stood  between 
them  both  and  the  means  of  great  wealth;  when  young  men 
forego  the  prospects  of  lucrative  positions  that  they  may  alle- 
viate a  misery  whose  bitter  cry  will  not  let  them  sleep;  when 
young  women  turn  their  backs  on  luxurious  homes  that  they 
may  teach  and  lift  the  ignorant  and  degraded;  we  see  the 
influence  on  men  and  women  of  the  religious  estimate  of  life, 
how  it  makes  them  capable  of  great  refusals  and  noble  sacri- 
fices, how  it  refines  and  elevates  and  spiritualizes  then*  whole 
life. 

IV.  This  prepares  us  to  say,  finally,  that  the  religious  esti- 
mation of  life  teaches  us  how  to  devote  all  things  to  their 
highest  ends.  It  may  be  said  to  be  the  business  of  life  to 
transform  the  lower  into  the  higher  forms  of  being.  From 
the  mineral  to  the  vegetable,  from  the  vegetable  to  the  animal, 
from  the  animal  to  the  spiritual,  all  the  forces  of  the  universe 
seem  to  be  employed  in  refining  the  crude,  elaborating  the 
essential,  and  passing  up  finer  and  finer  products  to  be  wrought 


248  THE  VERY  ELECT 

into  thinking,  affection  and  volition.  The  noblest  of  all 
activities  within  the  power  of  man  is  to  transmute  physical 
and  intellectual  into  spiritual  forces  and  results.  The  shekel 
of  the  sanctuary  estimates  things  not  in  the  gross  but  in  the 
essence.  It  is  a  measure  not  of  material  volume,  but  of  spirit- 
ual dynamics.  As  science  calculates  the  force  which  is  lodged 
in  an  amount  of  coal,  so  the  sanctuary's  estimate  upon  an  act, 
or  an  institution,  or  a  man,  is  in  terms  of  spiritual  vitality. 
What  is  a  young  man  worth?  The  immigration  bureau,  esti- 
mating him  by  his  muscular  productivity,  with  brutal  frank- 
ness declares  him  worth  to  the  country  a  thousand  dollars. 
The  employment  agency,  looking  him  through  more  carefully, 
canvasses  his  abilities,  his  education,  his  promise  of  growth 
with  experience,  and  rates  him  at  so  many  dollars  a  month 
now  and  so  many  hundred  or  thousand  a  year  ten  years  from 
now.  Religion  makes  a  larger  and  truer  estimate  of  him. 
He  has  so  much  body  as  physical  basis,  so  much  brain,  so  much 
capacity  of  affection,  so  much  power  of  will.  Multiply  all 
these  by  a  religious  purpose,  by  devotion  to  some  high,  noble 
and  holy  end  which  will  bring  up  to  its  maximum  efficiency 
without  misdirection  or  waste  every  power  and  faculty  he  has, 
and  the  result  in  goodness,  in  spiritual  attainment,  in  service 
to  mankind,  is  what  the  man  is  worth.  Time  seems  to  be  a 
comparatively  unimportant  element.  Divine  providence, 
which  has  an  eternity  of  leisure  for  working  out  its  designs, 
seems  to  delight  in  making  short  lives,  and  even  single  acts 
of  noble  lives,  to  go  on  living  themselves  over  and  over,  as  it 
were,  through  memory  and  transmitted  influences  ages  after 
their  natural  duration  has  ceased. 

Let  this  suggest  a  thought  with  reference  to  a  young  man's 
calling.  While  it  is  not  true  that  all  callings  are  equally 
sacred,  it  is  true  that  all  callings  are  sacred,  potentially  sacred, 
and  abundantly  so  in  proportion  to  the  devotion  which  is 
put  into  them.  A  consecrated  purpose  consecrates  the  call- 
ing, whatever  it  may  be.  But  the  truer  view  is  to  consider 


THE  RELIGIOUS  ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE        249 

life  itself  as  one's  calling,  and  the  religious  estimate  of  life  as 
furnishing  the  purpose  which  consecrates  it.  Life  thus  con- 
sidered ceases  to  be  a  thing  of  fragments  and  patches,  par- 
celed out  between  a  little  religion  in  this  part,  and  a  good  deal 
of  dull,  jogging,  commonplace  duty  in  every  other  part,  but 
becomes  rather  a  unit  in  its  scope  and  aim,  under  one  abiding 
and  constant  inspiration,  every  part  contributing  to  the 
working  efficiency  of  every  other  part,  and  all  to  the  come- 
liness and  joy  and  glory  of  the  whole.  Not  that  we  with  our 
limited  earthly  vision  can  always  see  how  the  simple  and 
humble  acts  of  a  devoted  life  are  made  subservient  to  the 
higher  ends  to  which  they  are  consecrated.  It  is  of  the  merit 
of  faith  to  trust  that  the  divine  order  of  things  will  bring  this 
about,  to  sing  "  God's  in  his  heaven,  all's  right  with  the 
world."  If  a  man  makes  a  religious  estimate  of  his  life,  that 
is,  if  he  desires  that  God  shall  direct  and  control  it  so  as  to 
bring  out  of  it  the  highest  uses  of  which  it  is  capable,  be 
assured  that  in  God's  own  way,  and  in  God's  own  estimate, 
it  will  be  a  successful  life;  that  whether  long  or  short,  whether 
splendid  or  obscure,  whether  in  man's  eyes  or  in  one's  own 
eyes  it  be  a  triumph  or  a  failure,  it  will  be  acceptable  to  God, 
which  is  all  one  can  ask;  and,  looked  back  upon  from  the  future 
life  with  its  clarified  vision  and  its  sanctified  estimations,  it 
will  be  seen  to  be  the  only  life  worth  living,  the  life  which  to 
have  lived  will  be  the  cause  of  never-ceasing  joy  and  thank- 
fulness. God  grant  us  all  grace  so  to  live. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

There  is  no  more  interesting  moment  in  human  life  than 
that  which  is  at  once  the  end  of  pupilage  and  the  beginning 
of  responsible  manhood,  the  moment  which  receives  all  the 
cumulated  forces  of  the  years  of  preparation  and  projects 
them  into  the  life  of  action.  This  interest  centers  partly 
upon  this  force  itself,  upon  its  amount  and  quality.  What 
makes  a  college  commencement  so  interesting  to  all  thoughtful 


250  THE  VERY  ELECT 

persons?  It  is  the  fascination  which  attends  the  thought 
and  the  spectacle  of  youthful  energy,  of  the  vitality  stored  up 
in  young  men  and  potential  in  achievements  which  are  as 
vast  as  thought  or  hope.  But  of  still  greater  interest  is  the 
possible  direction  which  this  force  may  take,  the  spirit  which 
is  to  determine  and  control  all  this  potentiality.  On  such  an 
occasion  we  are  all  optimists.  Imagination  loves  to  forecast 
for  these  young  men  lives  filled  with  the  highest  attainments 
and  services,  lives  through  which  all  this  force  shall  become 
beneficent,  consecrated,  religious.  Yourselves  are  optimists. 
If  religion  consists  in  the  devotion  of  self  to  the  highest  ideals, 
you  are  all  for  the  moment,  and  in  that  sense,  religious.  If 
every  college  graduate  would  live  up  to  the  aspirations  of  the 
baccalaureate  week,  neither  man  nor  God  need  ask  much  more 
of  him.  Then  at  any  rate,  if  ever,  his  estimations  are  accord- 
ing to  the  shekel  of  the  sanctuary. 

The  evolution  of  the  man  out  of  the  college  graduate  is  an 
instructive  study.  He  graduates,  if  his  college  has  done  its 
work  upon  him  at  all  well,  in  a  fine  glow  of  idealism.  But  this 
vision  splendid  fades  in  time  into  the  light  of  common  day. 
He  gets  to  be  worldly  and  what  he  calls  practical.  He  believes 
less  in  his  college  and  in  college  ideas.  His  estimations  of 
life  become  those  of  the  market-place  and  the  exchange. 
We  abolished  the  old  custom  of  masters'  orations  on  the  com- 
mencement stage,  because  with  occasional  exceptions  they 
were  conspicuously  on  a  lower  key  than  those  of  the  graduat- 
ing class.  Their  cynicism  and  affected  worldly  wisdom  grated 
harshly  on  ears  accustomed  to  finer  tones.  But,  with  the 
providential  discipline  and  deeper  experience  of  life,  this  scep- 
tical mood  passes,  and  the  more  idealistic  and  more  spiritual 
temper  returns.  And  just  as  the  pain  and  sorrow  and  realism 
of  life  so  often  bring  the  sceptic  back  to  the  faith  he  learned 
at  his  mother's  knee,  so  the  college  graduate  in  the  maturity  and 
wisdom  of  his  adult  life  comes  back  to  the  faith  of  his  old  col- 
lege. We  shall  quite  likely  hear  from  the  class  which  will  this 


THE  RELIGIOUS   ESTIMATE  OF  LIFE       251 

week  celebrate  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  its  graduation  an 
amount  of  sentiment  and  of  confidence  in  old  college  ideals 
which  will  show  us  how  beatuiful  it  is  to  have  a  growing  faith 
in  all  things  high  and  pure  and  noble  as  men  grow  older  and 
wiser. 

On  no  one  point  are  the  young  men  of  this  time  to  be  more 
congratulated  than  on  the  present  attitude  of  religion  toward 
them  and  their  life.  In  some  former  times  thought  was  mainly 
occupied  with  getting  a  more  religious  conception  of  religion; 
it  is  now  occupied  with  getting  a  more  religious  conception  of 
life.  The  old  way  interested  a  few  speculative  and  imaginative 
minds:  it  resulted  in  theological  systems,  in  splendid  churches, 
and  hi  a  pietism  which  was  often  nothing  better  than  a  morbid 
and  selfish  other-worldliness.  Religion  says  to  the  young  man 
of  to-day:  "I  have  work  for  you  to  do  here  and  now  which  is 
for  the  time  being  as  important  and  as  religious  as  any  you 
will  ever  do  in  earth  or  heaven.  I  want  to  save  men;  that  is, 
I  want  to  give  them  good  homes,  thriving  industries,  helpful 
education,  sanitary  and  remedial  aid,  the  restraints  and  incen- 
tives which  favor  virtue,  and  above  all  the  great  stimulus  and 
inspiration  of  the  Christian  hope.  In  this  work  I  want  evange- 
lists and  pastors,  but  I  want  also  faithful  and  devoted  men  in 
all  the  other  callings.  I  offer  you  the  greatest  earthly  oppor- 
tunity, the  highest  earthly  satisfaction,  that  of  a  life  which  is 
at  the  same  time  your  will  and  God's  will,  in  which  you  will 
have  a  full,  free,  large  activity,  and  will  have  at  the  same  time 
the  consciousness  of  making  your  life  a  response  to  God's  call 
for  service." 

And  now,  as  the  last  word,  let  me  say  to  you  that  the  true 
religious  estimate  of  life  is  Christ's  estimate.  He  has  not 
merely  taught  us.  He  has  shown  us  what  life  is  worth,  and 
what  is  worth  living  for.  To  get  his  conception  of  life  is  the 
true  preparation  for  life ;  to  live  as  he  lived  is  life.  Let  the  same 
mind  be  in  you  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  your 
life  will  shape  itself  according  to  his  life. 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP 

A  man  mine  equal,  my  guide,  and  mine  acquaintance.  We  took  sweet 
counsel  together,  and  walked  unto  the  house  of  God  in  company. 

Psalm  lv:  13,  14. 

THE  sacred  Poet  here  gives  us  an  idyl  of  human  life  in  one 
of  its  happiest  conditions.  Looking  back  upon  this  bright 
past  from  a  time  of  trouble  and  estrangement,  how  does  his 
memory  brood  over  it,  amplifying  its  incidents,  and  fondly 
dwelling  upon  its  details!  And  how  readily  does  our  own 
sympathy  enter  into  and  reproduce  the  experience!  We  see 
in  that  far-away  time  two  friends  walking  arm  in  arm,  con- 
versing of  high  themes  congenial  to  them,  their  faces  as  their 
souls  aglow  with  the  interest  awakened  by  the  interchange  of 
thought  and  feeling,  their  walk  and  their  discourse  leading 
them,  as  all  high  converse  always  leads,  to  the  House  of  God. 
Is  it  a  picture  of  two  poets  in  Arcadia,  or  two  saints  in  Para- 
dise, of  two  college  friends  walking  by  the  Isis,  or  by  the 
Vermont  Lake?  It  is  all  of  these.  It  is  an  experience  which 
may  be  shared  by  all  beings  to  whom  God  has  given  mind  and 
soul.  It  is  one  of  the  common  glories  of  human  life.  It  is 
not  denied  to  those  in  humblest  life,  who  may,  by  God's  grace, 
find  some  solace  in  trouble  and  some  uplift  above  the  petty 
cares  of  their  narrow  life,  in  imparting  and  receiving  those 
better  thoughts  and  feelings  which  social  converse  calls  out 
from  their  hiding-place.  It  was  a  noble  thought  of  Milton's 
to  ascribe  even  to  lost  spirits  a  respite  and  a  resource  while 
"  retired  upon  a  hill  apart  they  reasoned  high"  on  themes  of 
philosophy.  But  this  enjoyment  comes  to  its  perfection  when 
minds  enriched  with  knowledge  and  gifted  with  utterance,  and 
souls  enamoured  of  truth  and  goodness,  meet  with  kindred 
minds  and  souls,  in  an  intercourse  which  friendship  enhances 

252 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  253 

and  which  the  years  prolong  and  ripen.  The  supreme  blessing 
of  such  an  experience  to  a  human  life,  and  the  unique  oppor- 
tunity which  college  life  affords  for  its  realization,  have  given 
me  my  theme  for  this  occasion. 

Our  first  thought  will  naturally  be  that  suggested  by  the 
words,  "a  man  mine  equal,"  one  congenial  to  me,  one  with  the 
same  tastes,  views,  and  aims.  How  can  two  walk  together 
except  they  are  agreed?  It  is  a  great  waste  of  brain-power 
and  of  heart-power  for  two  persons  to  be  calling  to  each  other 
across  a  great  gulf  of  differences  which  must  always  separate 
them.  That  good  men  have  polar  differences,  not  only  of 
judgments  but  of  mental  and  moral  constitution,  ensuring 
perpetual  differences  of  opinion,  so  that  they  are  not  merely 
incompatible  but  mutually  repellent,  is  a  plain  fact  which  it  is 
idle  to  ignore.  Christian  biography  shows  that  religion  rather 
intensifies  than  abates  these  antipathies.  They  do  not,  hap- 
pily, prevent  reciprocal  respect  or  even  admiration,  but  they 
are  a  bar  to  free  intercourse.  The  friend  to  whom  I  give  myself 
must  be  "mine  equal,"  one  who  dwells  in  the  same  mental  and 
moral  zone  with  me.  It  does  not  follow  that  he  must  live  on 
exactly  the  same  parallel.  I  would  rather  he  did  not.  The  ideal 
companionship  is  that  which  grows  out  of  general  agreement 
varied  by  strong  individuality.  If  the  highest  friendship  is 
impossible  between  those  whose  differences  are  pronounced  and 
radical,  it  is  equally  impossible  between  those  who  are  exactly 
alike.  In  such  a  case  friends  contribute  nothing  to  each  other, 
and  friendship  dies  for  lack  of  anything  to  feed  upon.  He 
helps  me  most  who  compels  me  at  the  same  time  to  sympathize 
with  his  position  and  to  defend  my  own.  The  result  will  be, 
not  a  compromise  which  is  always  a  mere  make-shift,  something 
feeble  and  colorless  which  neither  party  has  any  heart  for, 
but  that  larger  and  richer  truth  which  contains  all  the  partial 
truths,  which  each  saw  in  their  separateness  and  now  both  see 
in  their  integration.  Thus  do  equals  enlarge  and  enrich  each 
other's  being.  The  outcome  of  such  gentle  conflict  and  final 


254  THE  VERY  ELECT 

union  is  not  the  sum  merely  of  their  separate  contributions 
but  their  product.  There  are  dynamics  of  life,  and  intel- 
lectual companionship  is  one  of  its  most  potent  forces. 

Our  poet  also  remembers  his  friend  as  "guide."  There 
was  never  yet  a  true  friend  who  did  not  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
think  himself  to  be  the  gainer  in  the  partnership;  that  he 
received  more  than  he  gave;  that  not  he  but  the  other  was 
the  chief  source  of  light  and  power.  And  paradox  though  it 
may  be,  this  is  true  on  both  sides.  Each  is  guide  to  the  other. 
The  way  they  take  is  the  resultant  of  the  parallelogram  of  their 
individual  forces,  verging  this  way  or  that  according  to  the 
momentum  of  character  in  this  or  that  department  of  thought. 
And  how  often  is  the  greater  force  where  it  does  not  seem  to 
be!  How  often  the  apparent  leader,  the  one  led!  Just  as  we 
not  seldom  see  the  strong,  masterful  man  unconsciously  led 
by  silken  strings  in  gentler  hands,  so  among  young  men  does 
the  meek  and  quiet  spirit  often  lead  the  more  robust  and 
boisterous  comrade.  For  there  is  that  in  the  human  heart 
which  rejoices  in  superior  guidance.  Side  by  side  with  the 
love  of  mastery  is  the  spirit  of  loyalty  to  a  chosen  leader. 
Especially  among  young  men,  deeper  and  saner,  I  think,  than 
the  ambition  to  lead,  is  the  delight  of  finding  some  greater 
soul  around  whom  they  can  rally  and  to  whom  they  can  devote 
themselves.  Not  till  later  in  life  comes  that  disbelief  of 
superiority,  that  pessimism  of  judgment  between  merits  and 
faults  which  makes  late  friendships  almost  impossible.  "He 
was  my  guide,"  frankly  and  exultingly  says  the  young  man. 
"He  was  a  better  man  than  I.  He  was  prompt  to  see  and  to 
act  where  I  was  dull.  He  saw  more  deeply  into  things  than  I 
did.  When  all  the  rest  of  us  were  bickering  and  retorting  on 
some  mooted  question,  he  would  come  in  with  the  decisive 
word  which  not  only  silenced  but  convinced."  Many  a  man 
— many  a  great  man — has  said  of  such  a  one:  "to  him,  my 
equal,  my  guide,  I  owe  more  than  to  all  teachers  and  all  books; 
to  him  I  owe,  under  God,  all  that  is  worthy  in  what  I  have 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  255 

been  and  what  I  have  done."  The  estimate  is  often  exagger- 
ated and  unjust.  It  is  the  enthusiastic  tribute  of  the  devotee 
in  friendship.  But  the  sentiment  which  underlies  it  is  both 
true  and  noble.  It  is  the  heart's  recognition  of  the  worth  of 
God's  greatest  earthly  gift  to  man. 

And  this  prepares  us  for  the  thought  that  such  friends,  con- 
genial in  their  views  and  sympathies,  loyal  to  their  own 
convictions  but  rejoicing  in  reciprocal  leadership,  find  the  full 
joy  of  life  in  taking  counsel  together.  Perhaps  the  bare 
possession  of  truth  or  of  what  one  thinks  the  truth,  the  silent, 
solitary  contemplation  of  reality  and  beauty  ought  to  satisfy 
a  normal  human  soul,  and  no  accessories  or  conditions  are  really 
necessary  to  complete  its  happiness.  But  this  is  doubtful. 
Indeed  it  is  doubtful  whether  this  pure,  independent,  imper- 
sonal pursuit  of  the  truth  is  the  best  way  to  get  it — whether 
it  is  possible  to  get  the  highest  truth,  the  truth  of  life,  in  this 
way  at  all.  Truth  is  many-sided:  men  are  one-sided.  It  is 
not  given  to  one  man  to  see  the  many  sides  of  truth:  he  sees 
only  the  side  which  is  visible  from  his  point  of  view. 

"Your  opinions  on  religion,"  writes  Pusey  to  Stanley, 
"deeply  distress  me." 

"I  am  sorry,"  replies  Stanley  to  Pusey,  "but  your  opinions 
would  drive  me  into  infidelity." 

But  the  truth,  the  full  truth  requires  that  each  be  faithful 
to  his  opinion.  Pusey  must  plant  and  Stanley  must  water: 
Driver  and  Cheyne  and  Robertson  Smith  and  Briggs  must 
propound,  and  Burgon  and  Denison  and  Green  and  Bissell 
protest,  and  by  and  by  some  later  generation  will  get  the  truth 
as  to  inspiration,  to  which  each  of  the  contending  parties  will 
have  contributed  according  to  its  light.  Then  again  the 
motive  for  the  pursuit  of  truth  is  strengthened  by  companion- 
ship in  that  pursuit.  To  shout  "Eureka"  to  sympathizing 
ears,  to  rush  out  of  the  laboratory  into  the  circle  of  one's 
friends  and  cry,  "Rejoice  with  me  for  I  have  at  last  found  it," 
— this  is  one  great  inducement  men  have  to  scorn  delights  and 


256  THE  VERY  ELECT 

live  laborious  days.  I  am  not  sure  but  that  God  himself  has 
this  feeling  and  that  it  is  no  small  part  of  his  perfect  joy.  It 
is  at  least  a  relief  to  the  impression  we  sometimes  have  of  the 
loneliness  of  God  that  in  the  expression  of  himself  in  the  uni- 
verse he  appeals  to  the  sympathies  of  the  intelligences  whom 
he  has  created — that  in  the  mathematics  of  the  planets  and 
the  constellations,  in  all  the  colors  and  symmetries  and  graces 
of  animal  life,  and  above  all  in  the  ethics  and  theodicies  of  his 
moral  administration  he  is  calling  upon  all  whom  he  has  made 
in  his  image  and  who  like  to  take  counsel  with  him  in  respect 
to  the  eternal  principles  of  truth  and  right.  And  so  I  say  the 
full  joy  of  life  comes  to  those  who  take  counsel  together  on  these 
high  themes.  The  places,  the  hours,  the  persons  associated 
with  these  communings  become  sacred.  Just  as  half  a  century 
after  the  event  St.  John  remembered  just  where  the  sun  was 
in  the  afternoon  sky  when  he  first  saw  Jesus,  as  the  two  who 
walked  to  Emmaus  with  every  after-remembrance  of  that 
walk  felt  their  hearts  burn  within  them  till  those  hearts  ceased 
to  beat ;  so  in  all  true  lives  there  are  consecrated  memories  of 
other  walks,  other  companionships,  other  discourses,  other 
heart-burnings — moments  when  some  great  light  has  flashed 
from  another  soul  into  theirs,  when  under  the  inspiration  of 
some  holy  communion  with  a  kindred  spirit  they  have  reached 
a  high  resolve  which  made  life  another  and  a  nobler  reality  for 
ever  afterward. 

But  into  this  ideal  communion  another  element  enters 
beside  the  intellectual.  "We  took  sweet  counsel  together." 
It  is  counsel,  that  is,  it  is  thinking,  but  it  is  feeling  also.  It  is 
thinking  under  loving  conditions.  If  stern  philosophy  says, 
"  Beware  of  feeling,  it  bewilders  and  misleads,"  we  reply,  to 
deny  feeling  its  due  place  is  to  shut  up  one  of  the  avenues  of 
truth,  to  darken  the  light  upon  which  the  moral  sense  depends, 
and  to  paralyze  the  will.  True  feeling,  the  feeling  that  issues 
forth  from  a  pure  and  holy  soul,  has  a  discerning  power,  often 
far  beyond  the  ken  of  intellect.  Through  the  mist  and  storm 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  257 

of  Gennesaret  John  was  the  first  to  recognize  Jesus,  because 
he  loved  him  best.  The  beauty  of  truth,  the  quality  by  which 
it  addresses  the  imagination  and  the  affections,  is  not  the  least 
of  its  evidences.  If  our  view  of  truth  is  harsh  and  crabbed,  we 
must  seek  further  till  we  find  it  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute. 
The  test  of  character  is  not  perception  of  the  truth,  but  love 
of  the  truth.  Counsel  becomes  sweet  by  filtering  through 
two  human  souls.  Contact  with  life  gives  it  freshness  and  real- 
ity. Struggling  to  get  itself  expressed  in  terms  of  life,  truth 
overleaps  all  mere  logical  forms;  it  beams  from  the  eyes;  it 
curves  the  lips;  it  swells  the  tones;  and  assumes  all  the  charms 
of  personality.  A  dangerous  as  well  as  a  beneficent  power 
lurks  in  this  subtle  potency.  If  truth  has  its  sweet  counsels, 
error  has  its  siren  persuasives.  The  council  chambers  of 
statesmen,  the  conclaves  of  ecclesiastics,  the  clubs,  coteries, 
salons  of  political  intrigues,  even  the  common-rooms  of 
colleges,  remind  us  how  all  that  is  winning  in  friendship,  all 
the  graces  and  fascinations  of  social  life,  may  be  devoted  to 
the  service  and  propagation  of  error.  And  yet  there  is  truth 
in  Newman's  dictum  that  "Love  is  a  safeguard  of  faith  against 
superstition."  We  would  fain  believe,  we  must  believe  that 
a  loving  heart,  is  not,  because  it  is  loving,  easily  duped  into 
mistake  and  wrong,  that  counsel  is  not  dangerous  because  it 
is  sweet.  Surely  two  friends  in  linked  converse  on  then*  way 
to  the  House  of  God,  are  more  likely  to  attain  to  that  which  it 
behooves  man  to  know  and  to  believe,  than  the  disputants  in 
the  General  Assembly,  or  Convocation,  or  the  American  Board, 
who  with  angry  brow,  belligerent  emphasis  and  polemic 
arguments  discredit  the  views  they  advocate  and  antagonize 
the  listeners. 

The  last  touch  of  this  picture  brings  the  friends  to  the 
House  of  God.  "We  walked  to  the  house  of  God  in  com- 
pany," or  as  the  revised  version  has  it,  "  We  walked  in  the  house 
of  God  with  the  throng."  All  good  counsel  faithfully  pursued 
inevitably  leads  to  the  religious  aspects  of  truth.  Every 

17 


258  THE  VERY  ELECT 

process  of  thinking  is  unfinished  till  it  reaches  God.  Every 
mind  engaged  in  earnest  thinking  is  unsatisfied  till  it  gets  back 
or  forward  to  God.  When  two  friends  reach  that  point  in 
their  converse  where  each,  or  either,  tacitly  says,  "I  can  go 
no  farther  in  that  direction,  because  we  shall  soon  come  to  a 
religious  question/'  that  is  an  end  not  only  to  all  sweet  counsel, 
but  to  all  honest  and  thorough  thinking.  When  we  hear  of 
two  friends  sitting  up  till  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  we  know 
that  they  have  got  upon  the  religious  bearing  of  some  question 
and  that  they  are  having  it  out  like  good  friends  and  honest 
men.  For  the  only  thoroughgoing,  thick-and-thin  friend  is 
the  man  with  whom  you  can  delve  in  the  mines  of  truth  till 
you  get  down  into  the  religious  strata.  The  particular  stratum 
you  reach  at  any  time  may  be  the  theological;  it  may  be  one 
of  those  great  deep  questions  in  soul-life,  which,  with  all  the 
curses  heaped  upon  them,  will  not  down,  questions  which  never 
settled,  perhaps  never  to  be  settled,  come  up  again  and  again, 
age  after  age,  especially  in  companies  of  thinking  youths, 
questions  to  the  pros  and  contras  of  which,  the  combats  and 
the  sweet  counsels,  college  walls  have  echoed  in  every  suc- 
cessive generation.  Or  it  might  be  one  of  the  still  greater 
and  deeper  themes  of  the  personal  religious  life.  For  it  is 
when  friendly  communion  touches  one  of  these  themes,  when 
soul  meets  soul  in  sincerity  and  confidence,  giving  and  receiv- 
ing experience,  aspiration,  inspiration  in  this  sphere  of  the 
moral  and  spiritual  life,  it  is  here  that  sweet  counsel  has 
reached  its  highest  consummation.  "Tell  me,  dear  soul, 
what  out  of  your  own  experience  you  know  about  prayer, 
about  repentance,  about  the  sense  of  forgiveness,  about  the 
hope  that  smiles  on  death  and  is  full  of  immortality.  Tell  me 
what  you  have  learned  in  thoughtful  midnight  hours,  what  your 
feelings  were  when  with  sober  eye  you  looked  on  man's  mor- 
tality. Tell  me  whether  in  some  hour  of  agony,  or  some 
moment  of  exaltation,  you  have  had  visions  of  things  that  are 
very  far  off;  and  tell  me  how  they  looked  to  you  then,  and 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  259 

how  other  things  looked  in  that  strange  revealing  light." 
And  so  one  soul  gives  up  to  another  the  deepest  secrets  of  its 
life,  and  sweet  counsel  becomes  inspiration. 

If  now  I  have  not  exaggerated  the  value  and  potency  of 
intellectual  companionship — and  that  could  hardly  be — the 
promotion  of  it  would  seem  to  be  one  of  the  main  purposes 
for  which  a  college  exists.  This  of  course  means  something 
more  than  the  common  saying  that  the  social  enjoyments  of 
college  life  are  among  its  greatest  attractions.  It  means  that 
there  are  undeveloped  possibilities  of  highest  good  in  the 
communion  of  young  souls  under  the  conditions  which  college 
life  at  its  best  might  afford.  That  there  is  now  much  of  this 
better  social  life  in  our  colleges  I  am  happy  to  believe.  But 
I  am  sure  it  might  become  more  prevalent  and  more  effective 
if  it  were  frankly  recognized  and  in  every  helpful  way  encour- 
aged as  one  of  the  main  advantages  of  college  life.  To  this 
end  the  architecture,  the  grounds,  the  regulations  of  college 
residence  should  all  be  adjusted.  All  the  appointments  of 
college  should  aim  first  and  foremost  to  promote  study, 
secondly  and  with  hardly  inferior  solicitude  to  promote 
scholarly  society.  Secluded  grounds,  shaded  walks  within 
the  college  enclosure,  groves  and  gardens,  college  common- 
rooms,  all  suggestions  and  opportunities  for  quiet,  thoughtful 
companionship,  should  be  among  the  objects  of  college  endow- 
ments and  of  administrative  forethought. 

Again,  an  institution  for  higher  learning  will  best  fulfill  its 
functions  by  being  in  its  essential  idea  a  collegiate  society. 
In  the  lower  grades  of  education  the  distance  between  teacher 
and  learner  is  wide.  Authority,  prescription  on  one  side, 
submission,  docility  on  the  other,  must  be  insisted  on.  But 
as  the  grades  advance  this  distance  becomes  less  and  less. 
In  the  highest  grades  instead  of  dogmatic  instruction  education 
becomes  guidance  in  co-operation.  One  of  the  wisest  of  the 
old  college  founders  wished  his  college  to  be  a  hive  of  bees. 
We  do  not  readily  imagine  Socrates  as  lecturing  and  Alcibiades 


260  THE  VERY  ELECT 

as  reciting.  Earnest  personal  study,  individual  labor,  guided, 
stimulated,  tested,  by  more  advanced  minds — that  is  the 
ideal  higher  education  to  which  we  are  slowly  but  surely 
coming.  The  greatest  teacher  this  University  ever  had  was 
James  Marsh,  and  his  pupils  unite  in  testifying  that  he  gave 
them  most  when  they  met  him  in  his  study,  or  were  taken  by 
him  on  his  walks.  Then  they  took  sweet  counsel  together. 
The  same  has  been  often  said  of  that  prince  of  teachers,  Dr. 
Arnold,  and  of  him  whom  so  many  in  England  are  now  lament- 
ing, the  Master  of  Balliol. 

But  all  that  I  have  tried  to  say  is  to  little  purpose  if  it  does 
not  make  it  perfectly  clear  that  college  life  comes  to  its  flower 
in  the  religious  spirit  which  it  fosters.  If  I  should  say  that  the 
humanistic  element  in  education  is  the  most  important,  that 
would  be  saying  the  same  thing  in  another  way.  If  univer- 
sities ever  become  mere  groups  of  cabinets,  laboratories,  and 
dissecting-rooms,  with  never  a  spire  or  a  chapel  among  them, 
testifying  to  the  immortal  dignity  and  destiny  of  man,  the 
finest  character  and  the  noblest  converse  will  be  lacking. 
The  scientific  spirit,  that  spirit  which  cultivates  coldness  of 
temper  and  hardness  of  belief,  especially  needs  to  associate 
with  itself,  and  to  take  sweet  counsel  with,  the  religious  spirit, 
the  spirit  which  believeth  all  things  and  hopeth  all  things. 
The  time  has  been  when  logic,  and  history,  and  even  theology, 
as  taught,  were  thoroughly  inhuman  and  irreligious  studies. 
The  time  is  coming  and  now  is  when  chemistry,  and  biology, 
and  mathematics,  humanized,  studied  in  their  relations  with 
life  as  it  is  and  as  it  might  be,  are  making  their  votaries  better 
lovers  of  men  and  better  worshipers  of  God. 

And  this  gives  me  our  final  thought  on  this  theme — the 
thought  of  him  who  when  for  a  little  while  he  was  to  be  parted 
from  his  disciples  said  to  them,  "  Henceforth  I  call  you  friends." 
In  a  few  hours  he  was  to  die,  and  yet,  as  though  he  were  looking 
forward  to  a  long  future,  he  said,  "Henceforth  I  call  you 
friends."  This  can  mean  nothing  less  than  that  the  life  of 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  261 

Christians  is  a  life  of  friendship  with  their  Lord,  and  with  each 
other.  He  will  be  their  equal,  their  guide,  their  acquaintance; 
he  will  take  sweet  counsel  with  them,,  and  walk  to  the  House 
of  God  in  their  company.  Here  is  the  secret  of  the  Church. 
It  is  the  fellowship  of  those  who  walk  with  Christ.  Here  is 
the  much  sought  bond  of  Christian  union.  It  is  the  common 
friendship  of  those  who  are  friends  of  Christ.  Here  is  the 
perfection  and  fruition  of  life;  it  is  entering  into  the  joy  of  the 
Lord. 

ADDRESS  TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS 

Four  years  ago  you  were  led  in  the  providence  of  God  to  this 
place  and  this  University  for  a  course  of  education,  and  by  the 
same  good  providence  you  are  now  permitted  to  complete  that 
course.  We  hope  that  on  this  day  you  have,  and  all  through 
your  life  ybu  will  have,  your  own  approval  for  what  you  have 
done  during  these  four  years.  No  joy  in  life  is  so  sweet  as  the 
approval  of  a  good  conscience,  carrying  with  it  a  sense  of  God's 
approval.  If  there  are  things  you  could  wish  had  been  other- 
wise,— and  your  lot  had  else  not  been  human — still  we  trust 
that  you  can  with  gratitude  and  some  degree  of  satisfaction 
remember  all  the  way  which  the  Lord  your  God  has  led  you. 
You  shall  not  lack  in  the  comfort  of  this  retrospect  our  com- 
mendation for  fidelity  in  duty,  for  upright  and  courteous 
demeanor,  and  for  good  attainments.  We  send  you  forth  into 
the  callings  of  life  with  the  confidence  that  you  will  prove  your- 
selves workmen  of  whom  the  University  will  never  be  ashamed. 

As  college  men  and  women  you  will  have  a  unique  position 
in  society,  a  position  made  up  of  privileges  and  obligations. 
On  one  point  you  must  not  deceive  yourselves.  Yours  is  not 
the  fors  clavigera.  You  do  not  because  you  are  college  grad- 
uates carry  the  key  that  opens  all  doors.  You  will  have  to 
match  yourselves  with  men  of  equal,  perhaps  greater  ability 
who  are  not  college  graduates.  The  knowledge  you  have 
acquired  will  have  to  be  revised  every  day  in  the  light  of  the 


262  THE  VERY  ELECT 

latest  thought  of  that  day.  But  one  great  advantage  you 
have,  and  we  counsel  you  to  make  the  most  of  it.  You  have 
learned  the  true  standard  of  merit.  You  have  got  possession 
of  fixed  principles  for  judging  of  all  mutable  things.  You  are 
not  tied  down  to  the  present  and  the  concrete.  You  know, 
or  you  can  know,  or  you  have  formed  the  habit  of  wanting  to 
know,  what  is  the  best  on  every  subject,  what  the  best  men  have 
thought  about  it,  what  the  prophets  are  looking  and  striving 
for.  Colleges  are  breeders  of  ideals.  All  young  graduates 
are  visionaries;  if  they  are  true  to  their  impressions  they  are 
always  visionaries,  only  growing  wiser  and  safer.  It  is  the 
great  pride  and  joy  of  a  college  to  see  its  graduates  carry  the 
standards  around  which  the  best  men  and  women  of  the 
community  with  one  accord  rally. 

The  time  was  when  it  was  thought,  rightly  or  wrongly,  that 
a  college  education  did  not  fit  men  for  the  highest  \isefulness, 
that  it  made  them  timid,  impracticable,  luxurious,  unwilling 
to  pull  in  the  harness  of  everyday  work.  We  hope  we  have 
changed  all  that,  so  far  as  it  ever  was  true.  The  avowed  aim 
of  the  best  educators  now  is  to  make  men  and  women  useful 
members  of  society.  In  sending  them  out  the  college  does  not 
now  say  to  them:  " Continue  to  cultivate  yourself;  master 
more  sciences;  keep  well  up  in  esthetics.  It  says  rather:  "get 
yourselves  well  up  in  the  great  questions  of  the  day;  study 
sound  finance  and  talk  it  vigorously  on  every  street  corner; 
meddle  with  politics,  or  rather  enter  into  politics  with  a  resolute 
will,  and  with  no  effeminacy  or  squeamishness  serve  on  juries, 
and  posses,  and  vigilance  committees;  do  the  work  of  good 
citizens,  and  let  no  man  despise  you.  Be  servants  of  the 
Church.  Be  preachers,  prophets,  bishops,  missionaries,  if 
God  calls  you  to  these  offices;  but  if  God  calls  you,  equally  be 
deacons,  Dorcases,  elders,  vestrymen,  class  leaders,  door- 
keepers in  the  house  of  God." 

Among  the  serious  questions  which  confront  you  as  you 
step  across  the  academic  threshold,  will  be  the  choice  of  a 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  263 

calling — for  truly  a  calling  I  trust  you  will  consider  it.  Some 
of  you,  I  hope  and  believe,  will  be  called  to  the  ministry  of  the 
Word,  and  will  take  up  that  blessed  and  blessing  work  which 
our  beloved  young  Pitkin  has  just  laid  down,  not  however 
till  he  had  shown  us  how  even  a  short  life  may  be  a  beautiful 
one,  and  fruitful  in  good  works.  And  others  of  you  will,  I 
trust,  be  equally  called  of  God  to  serve  your  own  generation  by 
his  will  in  other  occupations.  In  all  vocations,  not  least  in  that  of 
the  home,  there  is  room  and  call  for  trained  minds,  loving  hearts, 
and  consecrated  wills.  May  the  greatest  and  best  of  friends  be 
your  companion  and  guide,  and  may  he  ever  give  you  his  sweet 
counsel,  until  he  bring  you  to  the  House  of  God  on  high. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

It  seems  to  me  highly  significant  that  the  final  counsels  of 
the  College  to  its  pupils  should  be  given  not  in  its  own  halls,  but 
in  a  church,  and  in  connection  with  a  religious  service ;  this  has  a 
two-fold  meaning.  It  is  a  recognition  first,  that  education  is  in 
its  essence  a  character-forming  agency,  and  as  such  seeks  the 
inspiration  and  guidance  of  religion;  and  secondly,  that  the  re- 
ligion with  which  the  college  allies  itself  is  not  something  peculiar 
and  esoteric,  but  that  which  it  shares  with  the  general  Christian 
community.  It  is  our  belief  and  our  joy,  that  the  religious 
life  of  the  college  and  of  the  community  are  mutually  helpful, 
that  we  give  and  receive  from  each  other  influences  which 
make  both  the  college  and  the  community  better.  We  like 
to  think  that  this  service  in  which  all  the  churches  unite  is 
their  expression  of  interest  as  churches  in  the  life  of  the 
college,  as  well  as  our  expression  of  our  feeling  of  community 
and  fellowship  with  the  common  and  total  religious  life  of 
our  place  and  time. 

You  will  see,  therefore,  that  whatever  special  theme  may  be 
presented  on  these  occasions,  the  subject  always  is  the  religious 
conception  of  life,  and  the  aim  always  is  to  take  advantage  of 
these  tender  and  thoughtful  moments  to  get  for  this  conception 


264  THE  VERY  ELECT 

access  and  adoption.  We  believe  that  a  college  career  in  any 
department,  studiously  and  faithfully  followed  through  its 
four  years'  course,  culminates  naturally,  almost  necessarily, 
in  that  temper  of  mind  and  heart  and  that  view  of  life,  which 
leads  one  to  choose  the  highest  standards  of  thought  and  con- 
duct and  the  noblest  type  of  human  character,  those  standards 
which  directly  or  indirectly  we  derive  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment; that  type  of  character  which  is  set  forth  in  its  perfection 
in  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  in  a  lower  degree  by  those  who 
represent  him  and  are  most  like  him.  And  it  is  for  this  reason, 
you  must  permit  me  to  say,  that  the  world  expects  so  much 
in  this  direction  from  liberally  educated  men  and  women. 
They  say  to  you:  "  You  have  had  leisure  and  endowments,  you 
have  been  fed  on  thoughts  transmitted  to  you  by  the  great  and 
good  of  all  the  race,  and  we  have  a  right  to  expect  in  you 
something  exceptionally  fair  and  good.  You  are  bound  to 
take  thought  for  things  honorable  in  the  sight  of  all  men." 
If  a  young  collegian,  aside  from  his  pardonable,  because 
youthful,  peccadilloes  and  with  all  his  youthful  conceit,  has  a 
standard  of  living  no  higher  than  that  of  average  men,  the 
world  is  surprised  and  shocked  and  pained.  They  are  inclined 
to  say,  "If  we  cannot  depend  on  you  for  leadership  in  the 
higher  life,  on  whom  can  we  depend?" 

I  have  tried,  young  friends,  to  present  to  you  today  the 
religious  conception  of  life  in  that  aspect  of  it  which  is  at  once 
the  most  attractive  and  the  most  severe;  and  I  have  done  so 
with  the  conviction  that  it  will  be  to  you  the  most  attractive 
because  it  is  the  most  severe.  The  youthful  spirit,  if  true  to 
its  instincts,  is  always  crying  out,  "Give  me  difficulties, 
mountains  to  climb,  hard  problems  to  solve,  heroic  tasks  to 
accomplish."  It  scorns  the  easy  and  the  commonplace.  This 
has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  secrets  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.  He  proposed  the  highest  standards.  He 
set  the  hardest  tasks.  And  these  have  always  been  fascina- 
tions to  noble  minds.  And  so  in  humble  imitation  of  his 


SPIRITUAL  COMPANIONSHIP  265 

method  I  appeal  to  the  noblest  and  truest  within  you  when  I 
call  upon  you  to  adopt  for  yourselves  these  highest  standards 
of  character.  The  most  discouraging  of  all  words  to  hear  from 
a  young  man  are,  " Others  do  this,  why  may  not  I?"  How 
much  nobler  to  say,  "Others  have  done  this,  why  cannot  I?" 
Noblest  of  all  is  it  to  say,  "  Though  no  man  has  done  this,  yet  by 
the  help  of  God,  will  I." 

And  now  I  will  add  to  these  thoughts  only  this  one  more. 
Take  your  estimate  of  life  and  your  principle  of  life  from  your 
highest  moments.  We  are  all  at  certain  times  lifted  above 
our  ordinary  plane  of  thought  and  feeling.  There  are  moments 
when  we  breathe  diviner  air,  and  see  things  in  a  more  revealing 
light.  There  are  thoughtful  midnight  hours.  There  are 
seasons  of  calm  weather  when  our  souls  become  far-sighted. 
To  those  who  have  not  forsaken  God,  and  whom  God  has  not 
forsaken,  these  are  sure  to  come.  Take  your  views  of  life,  and 
your  aims  in  life,  from  these,  and  not  from  times  when  you 
are  dispirited  and  perhaps  disgusted,  when  the  tones  of  mock- 
ery and  unfaith  disturb  and  depress  you.  Set  your  watches 
by  the  sun-dials  and  the  stars,  and  not  by  the  fog-bells.  Get 
your  estimates  of  life  not  from  Zola  but  from  St.  John.  And 
when  you  come  back  to  us,  as  we  trust  you  will  year  after  year, 
do  not  bring  with  you  that  air  of  worldly  wisdom  by  which  you 
would  have  us  believe  that  you  are  wiser  because  you  have  less 
faith  than  you  had.  Come  to  us  with  broader  sympathies 
with  all  that  is  human,  with  a  firmer  faith  in  the  diviner  ele- 
ments in  human  life,  and  with  your  brows  lighted  up  with  hope. 
And  so  when  we  grasp  your  hands  we  shall  get  from  you  new 
faith  and  new  courage  to  go  on  with  you  and  with  all  the  brave 
and  true  in  this  holy  work  of  making  this  human  life  more  and 
more  divine. 


1896.     THE   NOBLER  ELEMENTS    OF    CHARACTER 

Take  thought  for  things  honorable  in  the  sight  of  all  men. 

Romans  xii:  17. 

IN  THIS  same  chapter  the  apostle  exhorts  Christians  not  to 
be  conformed  to  this  world.  And  yet  here  he  sets  up  as  a 
standard  that  which  all  men  consider  honorable.  He  appeals 
from  the  world's  practice  to  the  world's  ideal.  And  in  express- 
ing this  ideal  he  has  chosen  the  word  which  more  than  any 
other  expresses  the  Greek  ideal — that  one  word  which  involves 
the  opposite  of  all  that  is  ugly,  or  base,  or  paltry,  and  includes 
all  that  is  comely,  graceful  and  noble.  Jew  though  he  was, 
Paul  insists  that  righteousness,  though  the  necessary  founda- 
tion, is  not  the  perfection  of  character,  and  so  he  imports,  and 
purifies,  and  sanctifies  those  other  elements  of  character,  its 
graces,  its  amenities,  its  charms,  which  he,  as  a  citizen  of  no 
mean  Greek  city,  had  learned  to  embody  in  the  Greek  word 
which  has  but  partial  expression  in  the  English  "  honorable." 
That  which  is  implied  though  but  half  expressed  in  this  Eng- 
lish text  will  be  our  theme  on  this  occasion:  the  higher  and 
finer,  the  lovely,  the  noble,  elements  of  Christian  character, 
and  these  especially  as  they  are  manifested  in  young  lives. 

And  let  me  say  at  the  outset  that  while  I  claim  that  a  liberal 
education  is  one  of  the  means  which  Christianity  uses  for  pro- 
ducing such  a  character,  I  am  not  going  to  claim  for  it  exclusive 
power  to  produce  this  result.  Our  own  experience  has  been 
singularly  unfortunate  if  it  has  not  made  us  acquainted  with 
simple  and  humble  lives  that  were  radiant  with  divine  beauty. 
If  any  of  you  think  that  those  characters  with  which  recent 
Scotch  fiction  has  made  us  familiar,  characters  that  under  an 
apparently  rough  exterior,  cherish  all  the  tenderness,  the 
gentleness,  the  refinement,  the  heroisms  of  humanity  in  its 
finest  types,  if  you  think  these  are  pure  fiction,  there  are  those 

266 


THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER  267 

of  us  who  can  assure  you  that  you  are  mistaken,  that  no 
man  could  ever  have  conceived  such  characters  unless  he  had 
known  them.  There  are  all  about  us,  wherever  the  Bible 
and  the  Church  and  the  Holy  Spirit  have  done  their  purifying, 
elevating  and  ennobling  work,  lives  which  in  their  unconscious 
beauty  and  nobility,  put  to  shame  those  of  us  who  have  had 
a  thousand  times  their  external  advantages  for  personal 
culture. 

And  yet  is  it  not  fab*  to  expect,  even  to  exact,  a  good  degree 
of  conformity  to  this  standard  in  those  who  have  these  excep- 
tional opportunities?  If  the  world  says  to  a  certain  relatively 
small  number  of  men  and  women,  "We  will  do  the  rough  work 
of  the  world,  we  will  delve  in  its  mines,  bring  food  out  of  its 
clods,  toil  in  its  mills  and  factories,  and  fetch  and  carry  in  its 
markets,  and  give  you  leisure  and  libraries  and  teachers,  in 
order  that  you  may  form  yourselves  under  the  influence  of  the 
noblest  thoughts  of  the  wisest  and  best  of  all  ages,  and  so  show 
us  what  a  man  and  a  woman  can  become,"  is  it  too  much  to 
expect  that  these  special  opportunities  will  develop  the  higher 
and  finer  traits  of  manhood  and  womanhood?  Whatever 
standard  may  be  thought  high  enough  for  those  in  certain 
other  conditions,  ought  not  college-bred  men  or  women,  as 
they  try  to  take  their  proper  places  and  do  their  proper  work 
in  the  world,  to  set  their  thought  on  the  things  that  are  fair 
and  fine,  honorable  and  lovely,  in  the  sight  of  all  men? 

What  are  these  finer  qualities  that  compel  the  admiration 
of  all  men,  what  are  these  "counsels  of  perfection,"  which  by 
the  universal  suffrage  of  mankind  canonize  their  possessors? 
What,  at  least,  are  some  of  them,  the  chief  of  them? 

Now  of  course  we  shall  not  number  among  these  the  rudi- 
mentary virtues,  such  as  honesty,  truthfulness,  kindness, 
virtues  the  far-reaching  importance  of  which  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  overrate,  which  in  their  advanced  stages  are  all 
too  rare,  but  which  belong  to  the  foundation,  not  the  super- 
structure, of  character. 


268  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Taking  these  for  granted,  I  shall  name  first  what  we  may  call 
a  fine  Sensitiveness  to  the  claims  of  the  human  in  human  life. 
That  was  perhaps  an  excusable,  but  it  certainly  was  a  false 
view;  that  mock  humility,  if  we  may  use  so  harsh  a  term,  which 
led  men  to  debase  and  decry  the  human  in  order  to  exalt  the 
divine.  That  essentially  atheistic  view  of  humanity  Jesus 
condemned  and  outlawed  when  he  glorified  our  human  nature 
by  taking  it  unto  himself  and  calling  himself  the  Son  of  Man. 
The  great  lesson  of  his  life  and  of  his  teaching  was  the  precious- 
ness  to  him  and  to  God  the  Father,  of  a  human  life,  and  of 
everything  affecting  a  human  life.  What  a  world,  not  of 
affection  merely  as  we  usually  take  it,  but  of  appreciation, 
of  valuation,  lies  in  the  assurance  that  the  hairs  of  your  head 
are  all  numbered.  What  other  beings  Jesus  may  love  and 
care  for  in  other  worlds  he  did  not  tell  us,  but  he  left  us  to 
think  and  believe  that  in  his  estimate  the  greatest  thing  God 
has  made  is  a  man,  his  greatest  care  a  human  life,  and  that 
they  please  him  best  and  are  most  like  him,  who  honor  most 
highly  and  care  most  lovingly  and  tenderly  for  human  happi- 
ness and  well-being.  If  these  orbs  above  us  are  filled  with 
beings  who  can  think  and  love  and  will,  as  we  do,  then  God 
has  repeated  this  great  truth  in  millions  of  worlds;  if  they  are 
not  so  peopled,  then  we  know  that  all  the  suns  and  all  the  con- 
stellations are  not  of  as  much  worth  to  God  as  one  human 
being. 

Now  he  who  thus  estimates  man  and  human  life  will  esti- 
mate accordingly  everything  which  touches  and  affects  that 
life.  By  this  estimate  he  will  measure  things  as  great  or  small, 
as  important  or  trivial.  A  speck  of  dust  in  a  human  eye  will 
be  to  him  a  larger  object  than  a  mountain  of  gold  which  touches 
no  life.  Nothing  is  great  which  does  not  greatly  affect  human 
life;  everything  is  great  which  does  so  affect  it.  Does  the  world 
so  judge?  Most  certainly  it  does,  in  its  saner  hours.  Some- 
times it  seems  not,  but  it  does.  It  applauds  with  hands, 
with  shouts,  with  caps  in  the  air,  the  man  of  force;  but  with 


THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER   269 

hearts  the  man  of  gentle  feeling,  of  kindly  helpfulness  and 
humanity.  Who  are  the  world's  favorites,  in  actual  life,  and 
in  ideal  life?  Not  those  who  in  some  way  have  got  themselves 
dubbed  "the  great"  in  history,  but  those  who  have  brought 
healing  and  hope  into  other  lives,  the  deliverers  from  bondage, 
the  rescuers  from  peril,  men  like  Livingstone  and  Gordon  and 
Father  Damien  and  Doctor  Maclure,  women  like  Elizabeth 
Fry,  and  Sister  Dora,  and  Florence  Nightingale  and  Clara 
Barton. 

Now  to  have  what  I  have  called  a  fine  sensitiveness  as  to 
the  value  of  the  human  is  one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of 
the  higher  type  of  manhood  and  womanhood.  To  be  indiffer- 
ent or  callous  at  this  point  is  to  be  coarse:  to  be  all  alive  with 
sympathy  for  men  and  women  and  children  in  their  joys  and 
sorrows,  in  their  laughter  and  their  tears,  in  their  pain  and 
suffering,  and  in  their  aspirations  and  ecstasies,  this  is  what  we 
mean  by  refinement.  This  is  what  Virgil  has  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Aeneas  when  wrecked  and  wandering  amid  strangers 
he  saw  his  own  misfortunes  memorialized  and  exclaimed, 
"Here  also  tears  are  to  human  sorrows  given,  hearts  feel  for 
mankind."  It  is  this  which  made  a  modern  saint  break  out  in 
the  noble  exaggeration  that  "it  were  more  worth  while  to  save 
the  soul  of  one  single  wild  bandit  of  Calabria,  or  whining 
beggar  of  Palermo,  than  draw  a  hundred  lines  of  railway 
through  the  length  of  Italy,  except  so  far  as  these  great  na- 
tional works  tended  to  some  spiritual  good  beyond  them." 
Noblest  and  truest  of  all  was  our  Lord's  holy  rage  which 
prompted  him  to  say  that  rather  than  lead  astray  one  of  his 
little  ones  it  were  better  for  a  man  to  have  a  millstone  about 
his  neck  and  be  drowned  in  the  depths  of  the  sea. 

And  this  makes  it  natural  to  say  next,  that  the  higher 
natures  are  characterized  by  a  specially  fine  sensitiveness 
toward  the  claims  of  the  weaker  and  less  favored  in  our  common 
human  life.  It  is  significant  that  the  ideal  person  in  our 
English-speaking  races  is  named  after  this  characteristic — 


270  THE  VERY  ELECT 

a  gentleman.  It  would  not  be  going  far  aside  from  one  mean- 
ing of  the  text  to  translate  it  for  English  readers,  "take  thought 
to  be  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  gentlemen,  and  gentlewomen." 
I  know  the  etymology  which  gives  a  different  turn  to  the  word, 
which  makes  it  a  designation  merely  of  rank,  but  so  long  as 
our  adjective  gentle  has  the  same  origin,  the  moral  is  the  same. 
A  man  of  the  first  rank  has,  or  ought  to  have,  as  his  distin- 
guishing quality,  gentleness,  consideration  for  the  feelings,  the 
dues,  the  claims  of  others.  He  may  be  as  proud  as  St.  Paul 
was  in  being  a  freeborn  Roman  and  as  strenuous  to  maintain 
his  rights  and  dignities;  as  true  to  his  convictions  as  Hampden 
in  Parliament  or  Luther  at  Worms,  but  when  it  is  a  question 
of  those  over  whom  we  have  some  advantage,  those  whose 
feelings  are  in  our  power,  whose  peace  of  mind,  or  self-respect, 
or  good  name  is  dependent  on  us,  then  comes  the  test  of  our 
grain  whether  it  is  fine  or  coarse,  then,  and  not  when  we  have 
on  our  fine  clothes  and  our  fine  manners,  do  we  show  whether 
or  not  we  are  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen.  If  I  were  asked 
to  define  a  gentleman  I  should  say  he  is  one  who  thinks  more 
of  other  people's  feelings  than  of  his  own  rights,  and  more  of 
other  people's  rights  than  of  his  own  feelings.  And  if  I  were 
asked  to  point  out  the  model  gentleman  I  should  bow  my  knee 
to  him  who  being  in  the  form  of  God,  did  not  insist  on  this 
as  a  prize  to  be  clutched,  but  made  himself  of  no  reputation, 
and  humbled  himself  and  became  obedient  even  unto  death, 
for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation.  And  in  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other  the  natural  and  necessary  result  is:  "  Wherefore  God 
also  hath  highly  exalted  him  and  given  him  a  name  which  is 
above  every  name."  The  man  who  is  gentle  towards  others, 
who  humbles  himself  for  their  sake,  is  the  man  who  in  the  end 
is  highly  exalted,  and  has  a  name  above  every  name.  There 
is  nothing  so  beautiful  as  the  deference  of  a  great  soul,  the 
unconscious  self-effacement  of  a  superior  nature.  Have  your 
hearts  been  thinking  of  some  one  while  I  have  been  speaking 
of  this  type  of  character,  of  one  who  amid  great  fame,  and  in 


THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER  271 

high  position,  and  of  boundless  influence,  was  utterly  uncon- 
scious of  his  greatness,  was  meek  and  gentle,  spake  kindly 
words  of  his  detractors,  and  might  have  said  like  the  dying 
king  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber, 

"I  do  not  know  that  Christian  man  alive, 
With  whom  my  soul  is  any  jot  at  odds; 
I  thank  my  God  for  my  humility. " 

Have  you  been  thinking  of  such  a  one  and  putting  a  name  to 
the  character  I  have  been  describing?  Or  rather,  from  my  poor 
description  have  you  not  been  moved  to  call  up  the  form  and 
lineaments  of  a  man  who  was  great  in  his  gentleness  and 
gentle  in  his  greatness?  Then  you  have  been  thinking  of  one 
whom  all  men  admire  and  love  and  would  gladly  canonize, 
and  not  only  that,  of  one  who  is  dear  to  God,  one  who  is  great- 
est in  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Another  and  closely  kindred  characteristic  of  the  type  of 
men  we  are  considering  is  their  fine  sense  of  Subordination. 
Let  others  conceive  of  heaven  as  they  may.  Whatever  heaven 
may  be  or  may  not  be,  it  will  not  be  a  democracy.  We  shall 
not  then  and  there  be  governed  by  a  crowd  made  up  of  our 
equals  and  our  inferiors;  I  want  to  be  governed  by  my  superiors. 
I  trust  I  shall  be  willing  to  command,  if  God  sees  fit  to  give  me 
any  small  post  of  command,  but  I  know  I  shall  be  more  glad 
to  obey,  and  it  will  be  an  intense  joy  to  me  to  get  into  a  con- 
dition in  which  I  shall  have  set  over  me  those  who  are  wiser 
and  stronger  and  nobler  than  I  am.  And  I  have  not  the  small- 
est doubt  that  we  shall  all  find  it  so;  that  the  glorified  angels, 
and  glorified  men,  and  saints  of  humbler  gifts,  will  be  grouped 
in  subordination  due,  rank  above  rank,  each  and  all  happy 
that  they  are  just  where  they  are.  And  the  finer  souls  long 
for  some  such  condition  here  and  now,  and  do  what  in  them  lies 
to  realize  it,  by  doing  their  own  obedience  sweetly  and  gently. 
Truth  compels  me  to  say  that  this  fine  instinct  is  specially 
liable  to  abuse  and  perversion,  and  that  out  of  its  perversion 


272  THE  VERY  ELECT 

have  grown  some  of  the  worst  crimes  of  man  against  man. 
When  any  set  of  men  in  society,  or  state,  or  church,  dwell 
too  much  on  the  virtue  of  obedience,  especially  when  they 
make  it  the  chief  of  the  virtues,  it  is  time  to  raise  the  danger 
signals  and  run  up  the  standard  of  manly  independence  and 
preach  the  solemn  duty  of  individual  conviction.  But  never- 
theless, with  this  proviso  of  perpetual  vigilance  and  tenacious 
reserve  of  protest,  the  normal  condition  of  a  human  soul, 
especially  of  a  youthful  soul,  is  not  self-assertion,  but  subordi- 
nation, which  means,  to  know  one's  place,  to  submit  to  its 
conditions,  and  to  be  happy  in  such  submission.  It  is  this 
principle  which,  as  Wordsworth  says,  "preserves  the  stars 
from  wrong,  and  the  most  ancient  heavens  through  it  are  fresh 
and  strong."  It  is  the  parent  of  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
traits  in  human  character,  as  its  violation  is  of  some  of  the 
ugliest.  What  is  an  uglier  sight  than  insubordination  in  a 
child,  or  a  pupil,  or  a  soldier,  or  a  sailor?  What  sight  is  more 
beautiful  than  prompt  and  hearty  obedience  to  a  legitimately 
constituted  superior?  One  of  the  most  beautiful  sights  I 
ever  saw  was  a  brief  colloquy  across  the  dinner  table  between 
the  General  of  the  Army  and  a  Colonel  who  was  then  and 
there  ordered  to  leave  his  pleasant  post  and  go  on  a  dangerous 
and  difficult  mission;  but  the  beautiful  thing  about  it  was  not 
the  majesty  of  the  command  but  the  immediate  and  graceful 
obedience  of  the  officer  commanded.  There  is  dignity  in  such 
obedience,  and  in  all  true-hearted  loyal  obedience  to  what  is 
highest  and  best.  There  is  a  distinct  loss  of  dignity  in  all 
hesitation,  or  reluctance,  or  sullenness,  in  one's  obedience. 
What  a  beautiful  picture  is  that  which  the  psalmist  gives  us 
of  the  angels  that  excel  in  strength,  that  do  his  commandments, 
hearkening  unto  the  voice  of  his  word,  ready  at  his  bidding  to 
"post  o'er  land  and  ocean." 

This  must  suffice  for  what  we  may  call  the  softer  side  of  a 
noble  character.  We  must  now  turn  for  a  moment  to  the 
more  valorous  elements,  one  of  which  is  certainly  Magnan- 


THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER  273 

imity,  a  virtue  which,  as  well  as  the  large  mouth-filling  word 
which  so  well  expresses  it,  we  derive  from  Roman  sources. 
To  be  magnanimous  is  to  set  such  a  supreme  valuation  upon 
the  really  great  things  of  life  as  to  have  a  noble  disdain  for 
things  that  in  comparison  are  petty  and  paltry.  One  of  the 
finest  exemplifications  of  it  in  history  was  the  spirit  which 
prompted  the  Pilgrims  to  say,  "it  is  not  with  us  as  with  those 
whom  small  things  can  discourage."  It  breaks  out  hi  the 
exultation  of  Tennyson  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  curled 
darlings  of  England  had  shown  in  the  Crimean  War  that  they 
had  stuff  and  mettle:  "We  have  proved  we  have  hearts  in  a 
cause:  we  are  noble  still."  It  is  one  of  the  mitigations — I  do 
not  say  justifications — of  war  that  in  all  noble  minds  it  fosters 
the  spirit  of  magnanimity  as  was  so  abundantly  shown  in 
our  own  war,  and  on  both  sides,  because  it  is  one  of  the  sad 
facts  of  history  that  noble  spirits  and  illustrious  actions  have 
been  arrayed  against  each  other  in  all  great  conflicts.  But 
it  is  not  necessary  to  go  far  afield  for  illustrations  of  magnan- 
imity. I  do  not  know  a  more  beautiful  form  of  it  than  would 
come  out  to  view  if  the  history  of  any  college  class  were  un- 
folded before  us;  the  history  of  struggles  with  poverty  and 
hardship,  the  temptations  to  an  easier  and  perhaps  more 
luxurious  life  resisted,  the  self-denial  in  humble  homes,  the 
selection  of  some  one  in  a  family  to  whom  this  great  boon 
shall  be  conceded  by  all — a  history  like  that  the  recollection 
of  which  broke  down  Daniel  Webster  in  his  great  argument 
before  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  Dartmouth  College  case, 
and  broke  down  the  whole  Court  with  him — all  this  struggle 
and  sacrifice  because  of  sublime  faith  in  the  supreme  value 
of  character  and  of  the  condition  of  education  as  one  of  the 
elements  which  go  into  its  make-up.  For  when  we  trace  it 
back  to  its  sources,  magnanimity  is  found  to  have  its  spring 
in  faith,  faith  in  things  unseen,  in  the  realities,  in  the  eternal 
verities,  in  God,  in  righteousness,  in  the  supremacy  of  love, 
in  these  as  the  only  great  things,  beside  which  all  else  is  second- 
is 


274  THE  VERY  ELECT 

ary.  If  you  will  think  of  it,  the  strong  men,  the  men  who  are 
so  strong  that  they  are  calm  and  steadfast  in  their  strength, 
are  men  who  have  set  over  them,  and  over  their  lives,  a  few 
great  guiding  principles,  not  always  the  same,  but  always  great, 
of  which  they  are  sure,  absolutely  sure,  and  in  the  security 
of  which  they  ever  abide.  And  so  content  and  calm  are  they 
in  this  security,  that  they  are,  as  Horace  says,  fearless  amid 
crash  and  ruin;  like  St.  Paul,  none  of  these  things  move  them; 
they  are  careless  of  slights,  indifferent  to  affronts,  unruffled 
amid  calumnies,  hopeful  in  defeat,  loving  with  a  noble  whole- 
heartedness,  hating  with  a  noble  rage,  willing  with  an  energy 
which  disdains  obstacles,  acting  with  a  volume  and  momentum 
of  being  which  almost  always  wins  victory  and  always  deserves 
it. 

And  now  the  crown,  the  consummation  of  these  nobler 
qualities,  is  that  transcendent  virtue  which  we  call  Heroism, 
transcendent  as  to  its  quality  but  not  impossible,  not  super- 
human, and,  thank  God,  not  rare  in  human  life.  Heroism  is 
a  composite  virtue,  made  up  of  idealism,  courage,  and  the 
capacity  for  suffering.  The  heroic  stage  of  life  is  the  youthful 
stage,  because  only  in  this  stage  does  the  heart  cherish  those 
ideals  which  old  age  calls  illusions.  The  same  is  true  of 
nations.  The  time  was  when  knighthood  like  that  of  the 
Round  Table,  when  the  Crusades  for  the  recovery  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  aroused  a  sentiment,  even  a  passion  in  the  general 
mind.  But  now  when  similar  appeals  are  made,  for  the  lib- 
eration of  Poland,  or  for  the  release  of  Armenia  from  Turkish 
oppression,  little  or  no  response  comes  back.  Popular  en- 
thusiasm must  yield  to  national  policy.  Nations  are  too  old 
to  be  sentimental.  But  let  the  young  beware  of  this  subtle 
and  dangerous  infection  which  in  our  times  is  all  abroad, 
this  proscription  of  idealism,  this  affectation  of  senility,  this 
skepticism  and  mockery  of  heroism.  Beware  especially  of 
that  flattering  but  malignant  artifice  which  puts  the  boys  in 
the  front  but  puts  into  their  mouths  and  on  their  banners 


THE  NOBLER  ELEMENTS  OF  CHARACTER    275 

maxims  worthy  only  of  cynics  and  roues.  Youthful  idealism, 
youthful  courage,  youthful  endurance,  these  make  up  the 
heroism  which  is  honorable'  in  the  sight  of  all  men  and  to  which 
men  will  accord  leadership  in  the  coming  time. 

But  the  element  in  heroism  that  is  most  of  all  heroic  is 
capacity  for  suffering,  or  to  give  to  it  its  Christian  name, 
Sacrifice.  He  would  be  a  prophet  of  deceit  and  lies  who  should 
sing  to  these  young  hearts  the  siren  song  of  ease  and  sloth, 
who  should  wish  for  them  the  life  of  the  monks  of  Theleme, 
who  should  pretend  to  them  that  the  prizes  of  life  can  be  won, 
the  responsibilities  and  duties  of  life  met,  without  suffering 
and  sacrifice.  To  be  able  to  make  a  great  sacrifice  for  a  great 
object,  and  not  feel  it  to  be  a  sacrifice,  that  is,  not  to  grudge 
the  pain,  or  struggle,  or  loss,  but  to  give  it  willingly,  joyfully, — 
that  is  as  high  as  human  character  can  reach,  and  I  say  it 
reverently,  the  divine  character  can  go  no  higher.  To  endure 
the  cross  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  him,  this  is  evidence 
enough  of  Christ's  divinity.  It  is  easy  enough  to  say  all  this, 
and  to  feel  the  force  of  it,  on  this  beautiful  June  day  amid  the 
perfume  of  flowers  and  the  singing  of  birds,  and  to  be  honest 
in  hoping  that  we  are  what  we  think  and  feel,  but  it  will  need 
something  stouter  and  braver  than  summer  sentiment  to  make 
us  really  heroic  when  the  need  comes.  And  if  we  are  really 
heroic  when  that  need  comes,  we  shall  not  know  it.  Others 
will,  but  we  shall  not.  God  will  know  it,  but  we  shall  not. 
Perhaps  you  have  seen  lately  what  purports  to  be  a  soldier's 
description  of  an  action  memorable  for  the  splendid  bravery 
exhibited.  "A  magnificent  charge,  do  they  call  it?  Well, 
to  us  it  seemed  rather  warm  work,"  and  then  he  loses  himself 
in  the  incidents  of  the  conflict,  and  is  utterly  unconscious  of 
having  done  anything  remarkable.  No  man  was  ever  a  hero 
who  said  to  himself,  "I  will  be  a  hero,"  or  who  said,  "I  am  a 
hero."  A  man  does  his  duty,  does  what  in  some  crisis  he  sees 
and  knows  to  be  his  duty,  does  it  because  he  always  does  his 
duty,  does  it  under  the  influence  of  a  feeling  more  elevated, 


276  THE  VERY  ELECT 

more  inspired  than  he  is  aware  of,  but  does  it  calmly,  as  master 
of  himself,  and  with  no  thought  beyond  doing  the  thing  that 
is  to  be  done,  and  lo,  the  whole  world  appreciates  and  applauds 
and  adds  one  to  its  list  of  heroes;  and  the  divine  verdict,  un- 
heard as  yet,  is  recorded,  "Well  done,  good  and  faithful 
servant,"  and  all  the  while  the  man  himself  has  nothing  to  say 
of  himself  but  this,  "  I  could  not  possibly  have  done  otherwise." 
Does  any  one  ask,  where  are  these  impossible  heroes?  The 
answer  is,  they  are  all  about  you.  They  may  be  found  in 
your  own  household:  one  of  them  may  be  your  own  mother 
or  brother;  possibly,  though  you  may  not  think  it,  it  is  your- 
self— at  least  that  self  of  which  you  have  now  the  potency; 
for  what  the  grace  of  God  can  make  of  a  man,  because  he  is  a 
man,  only  the  Son  of  Man  can  know. 


1897.     THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF 

The  gate  opened  to  them  of  its  own  accord.    Acts  xii:  10. 

A  BRILLIANT  writer  some  years  ago  published  an  essay  on 
"the  total  depravity  of  inanimate  things."  It  was  good 
material  for  wit;  for  doctrine  it  was  faulty.  We  have  ceased 
to  believe  in  human  total  depravity;  we  are  coming  to  believe 
that  there  are  no  inanimate  things.  Even  the  crystal,  we  are 
asked  to  believe,  has  vital  force  within.  And  herein,  as  in 
so  many  things,  science  is  but  lagging  behind  faith.  To  the 
eye  of  poetic  faith  there  never  were  any  inanimate  things. 
Trees  and  rocks  and  rivers  and  fountains  were  animate  with 
divine  or  semi-divine  life.  Religious  faith  saw  still  more 
clearly  the  floods  clapping  their  hands,  the  valleys  shouting 
for  joy,  the  mountains  and  the  hills  breaking  forth  into  singing, 
the  sun  going  forth  as  a  bridegroom,  and  the  stars  in  then- 
courses  fighting  for  the  Lord's  people.  The  spirit  of  the 
universe  which  is  in  what  we  call  things,  the  spirit  of  God  which 
is  in  all  forces,  all  laws,  all  events,  works  with  and  for  him  who 
is  on  the  Lord's  side.  In  this  plain,  quiet,  prosaic  statement 
that  the  gate  opened  to  them  of  its  own  accord  I  seem  to  see 
man  approaching  the  obstacles,  the  threatening  dangers  of 
life — in  company  with  his  attendant  angel — the  Angel  of  God. 
When  the  time  has  come  for  the  servant  and  the  angel  of 
God  -walking  together  to  go  forth  on  their  mission,  doors  and 
bars  and  walls  are  in  league  with  them.  Even  the  huge, 
frowning,  sullen,  iron  gate  of  the  imprisoning  city  feels,  as  they 
approach  it,  a  sudden  thrill  of  sympathy,  and  of  its  own 
accord  turns  on  its  hinges  and  invites  them  outward  to  freedom 
and  opportunity. 

I  see  here  a  picture  of  youth  going  out  to  meet  its  oppor- 
tunities— youth,  which  for  seclusion  and  safety  has  been 

277 


278  THE  VERY  ELECT 

girt  about  with  walls  of  protection,  of  watch  and  ward,  of 
discipline;  but  now  when  the  fitting  hour  has  come,  bravely 
going  forth  to  confront  responsibilities,  obstacles,  dangers, 
not  knowing  how  these  formidable  and  frowning  things  are 
to  be  got  out  of  the  way;  but,  with  the  spirit  in  youth  which  is 
miscalled  audacity  and  is  really  faith,  believing  that  they  will 
be  removed:  and  I  see  with  him,  perhaps  to  him  invisible,  the 
Angel  of  God,  whom  all  things  recognize  and  obey,  and  I  see 
under  the  spell  of  his  pervading  presence,  things  become 
persons,  matter  become  conscious,  obstacles  crouch  into 
submission,  forces  hasten  to  proffer  their  services,  bars  fall, 
bolts  slide,  gates  open  of  their  own  accord,  and  the  very  spirit 
of  the  world  kneel  to  him  and  offer  him  the  freedom  of  the 
Material  Universe. 

The  gate  opens  first  to  Freedom.  There  are  few  sensations 
in  life  so  delicious  as  the  first  sense  of  freedom,  few  moments 
so  memorable  as  those  in  which  this  sensation  first  comes  to 
one.  To  be  rid  of  the  stifling  sense  of  confinement;  to  have 
the  consciousness  of  being  one's  own  self,  and  not  some  other 
self  within  and  over  one  dominating  his  very  self;  to  have  the 
feeling  of  sovereignty  over  one's  own  time,  pursuits,  choices, 
opinions,  actions — Oh,  this  is  sweet,  and  satisfying,  and  god- 
like; and  it  is  what  the  Creator  intended  that  we  should  have 
and  enjoy,  when  we  are  ready  for  it  and  are  equal  to  it.  But 
freedom  is  not  something  we  are  born  into  or  have  inherited; 
it  is  something  to  be  won,  and  that  by  the  hardest.  For  what 
is  freedom?  It  is  opportunity  for  all  our  powers  to  act 
according  to  their  true  nature.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  kite 
to  mount  diagonally  upward  under  the  resultant  of  two  forces, 
the  horizontal  force  of  the  wind  and  the  vertical  force  of  the 
string.  The  small  boy  thinks  till  he  tries  it  that  if  this  tether- 
ing string  were  cut,  the  kite  would  soar  above  the  clouds;  but 
instead  it  drops  to  the  ground.  It  has  lost  all  the  freedom  it 
had.  The  wild  horse  of  the  wilderness  is  not  as  free  as  the 
winner  of  the  St.  Leger,  the  last  product  of  subjection  to  man; 


THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF  279 

but  how  much  this  subjection  has  added!  what  beauty,  what 
swiftness,  what  grace  of  motion!  what  almost  human  qualities! 
Daniel  Boone  in  the  remote  forest  was  not  as  free  as  Daniel 
Webster  in  the  capital,  to  whom  all  the  arts  and  forces  of 
civilization  ministered,  giving  him  leisure  and  scope  for  the 
development  and  exercise  of  his  nobler  faculties.  The  small- 
boy  view  of  life  is  that  by  severing  the  restraints  of  duty  he 
gains  freedom;  he  does  not;  he  only  collapses.  Young  men 
chafe  under  the  irksomeness  of  training,  not  realizing  that  in 
the  end  it  enlarges  freedom;  the  great  secret  of  what  we  call 
civilization  is  that  it  makes  things  serve  man,  and  gives  the 
human  larger  scope  and  freer  play.  No  man  is  free  whose 
mental  and  moral  balance  is  disturbed  by  the  existence  within 
him  of  undeveloped  powers.  He  is  hampered  by  his  limita- 
tions. No  man  is  free  until  he  is  intelligent  and  virtuous  and 
religious;  then  appetite,  passion,  and  prejudice  no  longer  have 
unchecked  control  over  him.  So  then  school,  college,  experi- 
ence, life,  are  training  for  freedom.  When  a  young  man  is 
ready  to  be  freed,  he  is  free.  Shackles  fall  from  him;  bolts 
and  bars  move  aside  for  him;  all  doors  open  to  him.  Having 
learned  in  the  school  of  discipline  and  subjection  the  use  of 
his  powers,  having  learned  self-control,  modesty,  deference, 
obedience,  he  has  won  the  first,  in  some  respects  the  greatest, 
opportunity  of  life;  he  is  a  free  man,  God's  freeman. 

We  look  next  through  the  gateway  into  Opportunity.  The 
gate  which  opened  to  Peter  and  the  angel  was  not  a  gateway 
leading  outward  to  the  solitudes  but  into  the  city,  into  the 
great  city  where  men  congregate,  where  thought  is  in  ferment, 
where  ideas  are  shaped,  whence  influences  go  forth  to  help  or 
hurt  mankind.  Certain  men  in  our  time  are  styled  "oppor- 
tunists," — men  who  study  events  and  conform  to  them. 
Christian  thought  goes  further  than  this.  It  believes  that 
events  create  opportunities  and  offer  them  to  the  man  that 
can  use  them.  The  gates  open  to  him  of  their  own  accord. 
In  common  speech  we  call  it  his  luck;  in  loftier  language  we 


280  THE  VERY  ELECT 

call  him  a  man  of  destiny.  Bullets  shower  round  him  but 
avoid  him.  Winds  blow  him  on  his  way  and  dash  his  enemy 
on  the  rocks.  Seas  open  before  him  and  overwhelm  his 
pursuing  foe.  Harvests  ripen  or  fail,  tides  rise  or  fall,  frost  or 
sunshine  comes,  a  great  man  dies  or  a  new  great  man  appears, 
just  as  though  all  were  bent  on  doing  the  best  possible  for  him. 
But  it  is  not  luck;  it  is  not  destiny.  It  is  the  man  and  his 
opportunity  meeting  together.  It  is  the  little  Monitor 
appearing  in  Hampton  Roads  just  in  the  nick  of  time  to  save 
a  nation's  fleet  and  to  revolutionize  the  naval  systems  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  timely  word  in  a  hot  debate  which  turns  the 
scale  toward  peace,  or  justice,  or  honor.  Life  is  full  of  these 
critical  opportunities.  Who  would  not  wish  to  be  the  man  of 
the  hour,  of  the  moment,  to  know  how  to  do  or  to  say,  just  the 
right  thing  when  so  much  depends  on  the  doing  or  the  saying  of 
it? — to  be  able  to  say  the  Open  Sesame,  or  whatever  may  be 
the  countersign  mutually  understood  by  the  Angel  and  the 
spirit  of  the  iron  gate,  which  unlocks  the  mystery,  releases  the 
power,  and  sends  it  forth  on  its  beneficent  mission! 

The  gate  opens,  next,  the  passageway  to  Power.  Freedom 
is  merely  the  negative  side  of  opportunity;  it  is  of  no  avail 
unless  it  passes  on  to  power.  Men  should  not  be  blamed  for 
loving  power.  It  is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  godlike  in  us. 
It  was  the  Creator's  first  gift  to  man.  "And  God  said,  let 
man  have  dominion."  The  young  man  should  not  be  warned 
against  coveting  power.  "Covet  earnestly  the  best  gifts," 
and  power  is  one  of  them.  All  men  instinctively  admire  the 
man  of  power.  They  cannot  always  withhold  their  admira- 
tion, even  when  the  power  is  abused,  but  it  is  the  power  they 
admire  and  not  the  abuse  of  it.  That  which  makes  youth 
admirable,  that  which  attracts  crowds  to  see  athletic  sports, 
is  the  spectacle  of  power,  or  at  least  of  potency,  power  in  the 
promise.  But  what  is  the  source  of  power,  what  is  its  secret? 
One  very  marked  characteristic  of  all  great  manifestations  of 
power  is  calmness.  When  nature  performs  her  great  feats, 


THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF  281 

she  never  has  to  try  very  hard;  her  great  work  is  not  done  by 
storms  and  earthquakes,  but  by  sunshine,  and  dew,  and  frost, 
and  "the  gentle  rain  from  heaven  upon  the  place  beneath." 
The  great  men  of  power  never  seem  to  try  very  hard.  We 
cannot  imagine  Shakespeare  perspiring  over  Macbeth,  and  we 
know  that  Newton  was  lying  on  the  grass  when  he  thought  for 
the  first  time  the  greatest  thought  of  the  modern  ages.  And 
what  a  majestic  calmness  was  that  of  Jesus  himself  when  he 
uttered  those  mighty  words  which  were  to  upheave  this  whole 
planet !  If  it  had  been  necessary,  I  suppose  Peter's  attendant 
angel,  doubtless  one  of  those  angels  of  God  that  excel  in 
strength,  could  have  poised  a  huge  bar  upon  a  solid  fulcrum 
and  with  tremendous  force  and  great  crashing  noise  have 
wrenched  the  ponderous  gate  off  its  hinges.  But  what  was 
such  power  compared  with  that  which  went  forth  silently 
and  gently,  in  obedience  to  which  the  gate  opened  of  its  own 
accord!  Power  comes  to  one  from  his  being  in  such  alliance 
with  things,  with  forces,  with  hearts,  with  wills,  that  they 
will  all  serve  him  of  then*  own  accord.  It  is  a  pretty  conceit 
of  Emerson's  that  when  man  wanted  a  messenger  swifter  than 
wind  or  steam  to  carry  his  messages,  the  lightning  came  to  him 
and  said:  "I  will  take  your  message  for  you; — I  am  going  your 
way  and  would  just  as  lief  as  not;  no  trouble  at  all;  am  glad  to 
oblige  you."  And  so  man  has  got  this  great,  silent,  swift, 
million-handed,  million-tongued,  million-penned  power.  And 
so  it  is  through  all  the  realms  of  power.  A  man  must  know 
how  to  get  the  powers  of  the  universe  to  serve  him  of  their 
own  accord,  or  rather,  he  must  be  such  that  they  will  be  glad 
to  serve  him.  Scripture  speaks  of  one  who  is  in  league  with 
the  stones  of  the  field,  and  poetry  goes  but  a  step  farther  when 
it  represents  them  as  following  to  his  music.  The  secret  then 
of  power  is  that  a  man  must  be  such  a  man,  such  in  knowl- 
edge, in  integrity,  hi  sympathy  with  all  truth  and  all  reality, 
that  power  will  come  to  him  from  all  the  sources  of  power  and 
go  out  from  him  in  all  ways  of  beneficence. 


282  THE  VERY  ELECT 

And  this  prepares  us  to  see  that  the  open  gate  leads  next 
to  Service.  This  universe  has  no  place  and  no  use  for  any 
fact,  or  force,  or  being,  that  has  not  an  end  beyond  itself. 
The  term  " altruistic"  is  now  in  common  speech;  the  principle 
is  as  old  as  the  first  protoplasmic  cell  created.  Prof.  Drum- 
mond  has  shown,  if  it  needed  any  showing,  that  evolution 
involves  altruism.  When  this  principle  rises  into  the  sphere 
of  free-will  we  call  it  service — the  best  possible  answer  to  the 
old  question,  "What  is  the  chief  end  of  man?"  Service; 
power  used  beneficently. 

Our  thought  now  approaches  the  supreme  question,  the 
question  of  all  questions.  Hitherto  we  have  been  thinking 
of  the  spirit  of  the  universe:  the  question  now  comes  to  the 
heart  of  the  universe,  to  the  heart  of  God.  Has  God  a  heart? 
Is  the  supreme  being  in  this  universe  supreme  force,  supreme 
will,  or  supreme  love?  Does  God  take  highest  delight  in 
having  his  own  way,  or  in  devising  and  operating  beautiful 
mechanisms,  or  in  maintaining  celestial  judicatures;  or  in 
creating,  and  inspiring,  and  helping,  noble  and  beautiful 
beings,  intelligent  and  good  and  happy,  like  himself?  Is  God 
also  altruistic?  As  we  have  seen  that  the  highest  attribute  of 
man  is  the  spirit  of  service,  shall  we  find  its  counterpart  and 
antitype  in  God,  and  say  of  him  that  his  highest  attribute  is 
the  spirit  of  blessing?  To  deny  this  of  God  is  the  worst 
atheism;  to  doubt  it  is  despair;  to  believe  it  is  to  get  the 
true  inspiration  of  life.  Because  if  the  Omnipotent  Spirit  of 
the  Universe,  that  spirit  which  is  in  all  things,  all  forces,  all 
events,  is  the  spirit  of  blessing,  in  full  sympathy  with  the 
spirit  of  service,  then,  of  course,  to  him  who  is  going  forth  on 
his  mission  of  service,  all  doors  will  open  of  their  own  accord. 
This  will  not  dispense  with  strenuous  exertion  on  his  part. 
Not  without  toil,  and  conflict,  and  blood  does  service  reach  its 
ends,  because  temporarily  sin  can  and  does  impede  and  thwart 
the  omnipotent  spirit  of  blessing.  Man  suffers,  and  the  heart 
of  God  suffers  too,  in  this  stress  and  strife.  But  the  issue  of 


THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF  283 

every  such  crisis  is  that  great  and  effectual  doors  are  opened 
and  service  goes  forth  to  new  achievements.  The  Redeemer 
is  crucified,  but  the  Cross  draws  all  men  to  the  Crucified. 
The  disciples  are  persecuted,  but  persecution  scatters  them 
over  the  world  and  opens  a  thousand  new  doors  to  them. 
It  is  hard  to  be  a  slave,  but  slavery  opens  the  door  for  Christ- 
ianity into  Caesar's  palace.  So  it  was  in  the  beginning,  and 
so  a  thousand  times  since.  The  spirit  of  service  is  never 
finally  baffled  because  he  that  is  with  it  is  greater  than  he  that 
is  in  the  world.  The  one  thing  which  in  this  world  is  always 
sure  of  success,  real  if  not  apparent  success,  is  a  good  deed, 
service,  power  beneficently  used,  because  the  omnipotent 
spirit  of  blessing,  the  very  heart  of  God,  goes  out  with  it. 

Finally,  the  thought  comes  to  us  of  the  open  gateway  to  that 
fair  prospect  which  includes  all  we  have  seen  and  is  larger  and 
grander  than  all — the  gateway  into  Me,  that  larger,  fuller, 
richer,  more  abounding  life  which  our  Lord  said  he  came  to 
earth  to  bring  to  us.  What  we  live  for  is  life;  what  we  study 
for,  and  labor  for,  and  pray  for,  is  more  life.  Life  is  not  in 
order  to  salvation,  but  salvation  is  in  order  to  life.  What  the 
heart  of  the  young  man  and  the  young  woman  is  saying  to 
teachers  and  books  and  experience  is:  "Open  to  me  wider 
the  gate  of  life."  What  is  life?  What  makes  life  larger  and 
richer?  First,  knowledge.  When  the  poor  freedman  slowly 
spelt  his  way  through  his  first  sentence  by  the  light  of  his 
pine  knot  in  his  cabin  and  read,  "Thou  God  seest  me,"  and 
then  jumped  to  his  feet  and  shouted,  "John  Simons,  you  can 
read;  John  Simons,  you  are  a  man!" — and  when  Kepler, 
after  working  out  his  problem  in  astronomy,  with  uplifted  head 
and  solemn  voice  exclaimed,  "0  God,  I  think  thy  thoughts 
after  thee,"  it  was  one  and  the  same  thrilling  consciousness  of 
being  greatened  and  glorified  by  knowledge.  It  is  sometimes 
said  that  knowledge  begets  pride.  Let  us  hope  that  it  does; 
not  the  silly  pride  that  puffeth  up,  but  the  noble  and  solemn 
pride  of  being  privileged  to  see  and  think,  and  enjoy  and 


284  THE  VERY  ELECT 

impart  those  great  realities  on  which  all  true  life  depends. 
Secondly,  life  is  action.  Life  comes  to  the  consciousness  of 
itself,  of  its  powers  and  capacities,  by  action.  He  who  has 
learned  the  joy  of  glorious  activity  has  no  sympathy  with  that 
conception  of  life  which  deified  ease  and  sloth  in  the  gods  of 
Epicurus.  He  sympathizes  rather  with  that  exhilarating 
utterance  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  "The  Father  worketh  hitherto, 
and  I  work."  The  true  man  does  not  ask  the  world  to  excuse 
him  from  work:  he  is  all  the  time  saying  to  it,  "Give  me  more 
work:  give  me  more  inducements  to  work."  Often  the  world 
does  not  see,  often  the  man  himself  does  not  see,  that  he  is 
working  not  for  the  money,  or  the  fame,  but  for  the  work 
itself,  the  joy  of  it,  the  sense  of  power,  and  of  mastery  it  brings 
to  him.  Few  things  are  more  pitiful  than  the  envy  the  man 
who  cannot  work  feels  for  the  man  who  can.  Only  give  me 
back,  he  feels,  the  great  privilege  of  activity,  the  delight  of 
planning  and  executing  and  succeeding;  give  me  even  the  pain 
of  a  strenuous  failure  with  the  hope  of  succeeding  at  the  next 
trial,  and  you  may  have  all  else  the  world  has  to  give.  And 
highest  and  best  of  all,  life  is  love,  friendship,  society,  com- 
munion of  mind  with  mind  and  heart  with  heart.  It  is 
sometimes  painful  to  think  of  the  solitude  of  God,  but  this 
pain  is  relieved  when  we  think  of  God  as  having  created  beings 
in  his  own  image  and  likeness  on  purpose  that  he  might  have 
the  pleasures  of  society,  of  communion  with  them.  Is  it  too 
much  to  say  that  we  defraud  God,  that  we  frustrate  his 
purpose,  in  so  far  as  we  refuse  him  that  communion  which 
all  genuine  souls  yearn  for,  divine  or  human,  and  for  the  sake 
of  which  he  gave  us  our  being?  But  for  God  or  man  life  is 
love,  living  in  and  with  and  for  other  beings.  I  said  at  the 
outset  that  freedom  is  sweet — to  be  one's  own  self  and  not 
another's  self;  but  it  is  sweeter  still  to  devote  this  self  to  the 
welfare  of  another — to  be  mother  to  a  child — to  be  a  Doctor 
McClure  to  all  who  need  him  in  three  parishes — to  be  a  Sister 
Dora  to  the  sufferers  in  a  hospital.  Strange  and  pitiful  waste 


THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF  285 

of  life  this  seems  to  some!  "Oh,  you  need  not  pity  me,"  is 
the  reply  of  the  true  man  or  woman!  "Life  offers  few  such 
ecstacies  as  I  feel,  when  I  see  my  poor  ministrations  conferring 
health  and  hope  and  joy,  in  place  of  pain  and  distress  and 
despair.  I  have  some  faint  conception  of  how  God  feels, 
who  is  over  all  blessed  for  ever;  blessed,  I  am  sure,  in  the  main, 
because  he  can  confer  blessings  so  liberally  and  so  magnifi- 
cently." And  this  must  have  been  in  the  heart  of  the  apostle 
James,  the  practical  and  prosaic  James,  when  he  called  the  law 
of  love,  thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,  the  royal  law, 
as  though  the  regal  splendor  of  it  had  for  this  once  quickened 
his  pulse  into  a  throb  of  admiration. 

Does  the  gateway  into  this  larger  and  richer  life  open  to  the 
youth  of  its  own  accord?  Yes,  if  the  angel  of  God  is  with  him, 
leading  him,  and  if  he  follows  his  leading.  If  the  other  angel, 
the  bad  angel  who  walks  also  by  his  side,  and  whispers  in  his 
ear  seductive  words,  tempting  to  sloth,  and  vice,  and  folly,  if 
he  prevails  over  him,  then  to  him  another  gate  opens,  just  as 
easily  and  spontaneously,  the  gate  to  bondage,  to  feebleness, 
to  lethargy,  to  death,  the  gate  over  which  Dante  read,  "Aban- 
don hope,  all  ye  who  enter  here!"  But  if  the  youth  shuts  his 
ear  to  those  false  voices,  and  puts  his  hand  into  the  hand  of 
God's  angel,  he  will  find  a  way  prepared  for  him  which  no 
gates  nor  bars  can  obstruct — a  way  which  for  him  is  the  best 
way,  because  divine  wisdom  has  chosen  it  for  him — a  way 
which  may  lead  him  through  green  pastures  and  by  still  waters, 
or  may  lead  him,  as  it  led  Peter,  to  toil  and  conflict  and  martyr- 
dom—but will  infallibly  lead  him  to  freedom,  to  power,  to 
service,  to  life,  to  victory, — to  the  life  that  is  real  because 
eternal,  to  life  eternal,  to  life  victorious  and  triumphant  and 
divine. 

To  the  Graduating  Class: 

There  is  always  a  strong  temptation  to  use  such  an  occasion 
as  this  for  studying  and  discussing  some  one  of  the  great  open 


286  THE  VERY  ELECT 

questions  of  the  day,  but  I  like  rather  to  look  upon  it  as  the 
closing  class-room  exercise,  in  which  it  is  permitted  to  me  in 
behalf  of  all  your  instructors,  and  under  conditions  which  help 
to  deepen  impressions,  to  give  you  our  final  counsel  and  cheer. 
We  wish  you  to  look  out  upon  the  world  before  you  as  a  fair 
field  for  your  honorable  ambition.  Our  tuition  has  been  all 
lost  upon  you  if  your  hearts  today  are  not  full  of  ambition,  of 
high  hopes,  of  noble  faiths,  of  lofty  resolutions.  You  have  no 
right  to  appropriate  all  these  years  of  exemption  from  the 
world's  work  and  then  drop  to  the  level  of  a  commonplace, 
purposeless  life.  It  makes  us  impatient  sometimes  that  the 
undergraduate  should  seem  in  some  things  to  set  before  him- 
self a  standard  of  conduct  lower  than  that  of  other  young  men, 
but  no  college  sentiment,  and  no  outside  sentiment  tolerates  in 
a  young  graduate  any  standard  but  the  highest.  What  a 
reflection  it  would  be  on  us,  on  the  intellectual  and  moral  tone 
of  our  college,  and  of  college  work  and  college  life  personally, 
if  on  commencement  day,  for  example,  the  style  of  the  graduat- 
ing addresses  should  be  low-keyed,  flippant,  lacking  in  serious- 
ness and  depth.  But  nobody  would  ask  more  of  you,  I  believe 
God  himself  would  be  measurably  satisfied  with  you,  if  you 
carry  the  true  college  ideal  of  manhood  and  womanhood  into 
practical  life.  What  is  that  ideal?  What  special  obligation 
rests  on  college  men  and  women  because  they  are  such?  That 
is  the  question  I  have  tried  to  answer  for  you  today.  A  college 
career  is  at  once  an  opportunity  and  an  obligation.  It  is  an 
opportunity  in  that  it  opens  wide  to  you  the  gate  of  life — of  a 
large,  free,  rich  life;  it  is  an  obligation  in  that  it  calls  on  you  to 
enter  with  all  your  heart  and  soul  into  this  life  in  order  that  you 
may  not  only  enjoy  that  life  for  yourselves,  but  may  enrich 
the  life  of  others  and  glorify  human  life  itself. 

And  now,  as  you  pass  on  to  a  new  stage  in  this  life,  you  will 
come  under  conditions  which  are  at  once  more  severe  and  more 
generous.  There  is  no  surer  evidence  of  a  wise  superintending 
providence  than  that  this  universe  does  not  favor  the  laggard 


THE  DOOR  OPENING  OF  ITSELF  287 

and  the  weakling,  but  offers  splendid  reward  to  the  patient  and 
strenuous.  To  all  appearance  a  great,  frowning,  sullen,  iron 
gate  shuts  against  you  every  entrance  into  life.  Some  see  only 
this,  and  life  to  them  is  one  long,  whimpering  complaint  against 
the  hard  conditions  with  which  they  are  beset.  Even  if 
God's  angel  should  offer  to  them  his  guidance — and  he  does 
not  usually  come  to  such  as  these — they  would  complain  that 
he  came  too  early  in  the  morning.  But  such,  I  trust,  are  not 
you.  Your  very  presence -here  today  means  to  you — and  I 
congratulate  you  on  your  honest  pride  in  view  of  it — means 
that  you  have  well  learned  some  of  life's  hard  lessons,  and 
tasted  some  of  the  sweets  of  life's  conquests.  And  now,  if  I 
may,  I  want  to  hearten  you  for  your  future.  I  know  of  only 
one  way  of  doing  this.  " God  is  in  his  heaven:  all's  right  with 
the  world."  God's  angel,  God's  Holy  Spirit  is  in  the  world, 
ever  ready  to  attend  and  guide  those  who  have  set  their 
hearts  on  doing  the  work  which  God  and  all  good  men  are 
interested  in.  Go  with  him;  put  your  hand  in  his;  and  as  you 
go  on  together,  all  the  gates  of  life  will  open  to  you  of  their 
own  accord. 


WHO  WILL  SHOW  US  ANY  GOOD 

Who  will  show  us  any  good?     Psalm  iv:6. 

THERE  are  few  so  interesting  or  so  beautiful  sights  as  the 
face  of  youth  in  a  mood  of  thoughtful  reverie,  such  as  I  have 
sometimes  seen  of  a  morning  in  the  college  chapel,  such  as 
I  have  often  seen  on  Baccalaureate  Sunday,  such  as  I  may  be 
looking  down  upon  at  the  present  moment — a  face  and  a  look 
that  make  one  feel  at  once  his  opportunity  and  his  incompe- 
tency.  It  is  a  query  in  flesh  and  blood,  a  soul  yielding  itself 
to  the  workings  of  wonder  and  doubt  and  fear  and  hope  and 
aspiration  and  limitless  possibilities,  taking  shape  and  vanish- 
ing, beckoning  and  eluding,  in  the  dim  vision  of  the  future. 
It  is  the  mind  and  heart  of  youth  confronting,  confronted  by, 
the  mystery  of  life,  yearning  to  know,  eager  to  meet,  impatient 
to  realize,  what  life  has  to  offer.  Sometimes  the  eagerness  of 
the  look  is  dashed  with  a  tinge  of  dread,  as  though  a  not  always 
happy  experience  had  made  one  a  little  timorsome.  Some- 
times— I  trust  seldom — one  sees  the  face  of  the  cynic,  indicat- 
ing that  even  thus  early  some  one  has  learned  the  bad  lesson 
which  satiety  teaches,  the  passionless  indifference  to  which 
there  is  "  nothing  new  and  nothing  true,  and  it's  no  matter." 
Usually  the  look  is  open-eyed,  frank,  fearless,  as  of  one  who 
should  say,  "Tell  me  all,  the  good  and  the  bad,  the  bright  and 
the  dark;  it  is  torture  to  be  ever  watching  the  lips  of  the  sphinx 
who  knows  and  will  not  speak;  tell  me,  ye  men  of  knowledge 
and  of  experience,  ye  men  of  light  and  leading,  what  this 
mystery  is  which  so  beckons  and  fascinates  me,  which  so  eludes 
and  mocks  me." 

Now  the  first  answer  which  these  men  are  bound  to  make  to 
this  youthful  query  is  that  it  is  good  that  the  mystery  of  life 
be  not  for  you  wholly  removed,  good  rather  that  human  life 

288 


WHO  WILL  SHOW  US  ANY  GOOD  289 

be  always  and  for  all,  more  or  less  a  mystery.  It  is  good 
that  human  life  be  deep,  and  varied,  and  intricate — a  river, 
not  a  brook;  and  therefore  that  it  be  sometimes  dark,  and 
tumultuous  and  fathomless;  that  life  should  not  be  the  pretty 
story  a  child  tells  to  her  doll,  but  something  that  grown  men 
may  find  worth  their  while,  something  that  the  angels  desire 
to  look  into,  something  that  God  himself  is  interested  in. 
There  is  for  man  education  in  the  mystery  of  life.  It  teaches 
him  modesty  and  reticence  and  awe  and  reverence.  It  compels 
him  to  blend  reserve  with  his  daring,  to  temper  his  aspirations 
with  humility.  If  with  too  audacious  step,  he  starts  forth 
into  life,  pride  ruling  his  will,  loving  to  see  and  choose  his 
path,  he  is  sometimes  moved  to  pray  with  Newman — 

"Lead  Thou  me  on;  I  do  not  ask  to  see 
The  distant  scene, — one  step  enough  for  me." 

Sometimes,  I  say;  not  always,  not  habitually,  not  in  his 
best  moments.  This  hymn  of  Newman's  is  good  comfort  in 
moments  of  despondency;  it  is  not  good  stimulus  and  incentive 
in  times  of  outlook  and  high  purpose  and  consecration.  For 
this  query  in  the  face  and  the  heart  of  youth  is  a  divine  query — 
evidence  that  the  soul  is  not  dead  nor  slumbering,  but  awake 
to  its  high  destiny.  Christ  came  that  we  might  have  life — 
life  in  all  its  abundance — and  the  first  natural  instinct  of  a 
healthy  soul  is  a  desire  to  know  its  opportunities,  to  take 
account  of  the  inheritance  into  which  it  has  been  born  and  to 
which  it  has  a  divine  right.  The  most  pressing  and  the  most 
momentous  question  a  youth  can  ask  is,  "How  can  I  know  the 
resources  of  life  while  they  are  still  possibilities  and  not  yet 
experiences?" — sad  experiences,  perhaps,  when  with  better 
knowledge  and  foresight  they  might  have  been  different. 
Are  there  any  solutions  of  the  problems  of  life,  or  any  helps 
to  working  out  these  solutions  of  which  I  can  avail  myself? 
All  through  my  college  course  I  have  been  thinking  other 
men's  thoughts  after  them,  availing  myself  of  other  men's 

19 


290  THE  VERY  ELECT 

wisdom — sometimes  in  results,  sometimes  in  methods.  Who 
in  my  quest  respecting  life  will  show  me  any  good?  Where 
shall  wisdom  be  found  and  where  is  the  place  of  understanding 
in  this  the  most  important  of  all  subjects  of  human  learning 
and  research? 

Will  science  give  you  any  available  help  in  this  quest? 
Herbert  Spencer  in  a  valuable  and  in  many  respects  an  ad- 
mirable essay  on  Education  propounds  the  question,  "What 
kind  of  knowledge  is  of  most  worth,"  and  answers  it  in  a  single 
word,  "Science."  And  in  the  main  he  is  right,  for  science 
is  the  sum  of  the  knowledge  which  man  can  attain  by  obser- 
vation and  reasoning.  Science  is  much  more  than  physical 
science — that,  and  much  more.  All  knowledge  becomes 
scientific  when  it  becomes  large  and  exact  and  rationalized. 
In  this  sense  science  has  added  much  to  the  resources  of  life 
and  to  the  mastery  of  life  itself — something  by  its  contents, 
much  more  by  its  methods.  The  scientific  spirit  which  is 
entering  into  the  conduct  of  life,  even  into  the  domains  of 
morals  and  religion,  is  banishing  guessing  and  haphazarding 
and  blundering,  and  is  substituting  therefor  discernment 
and  vigilance  and  method,  and  the  organization  of  success. 

A  great  treasure-house  of  wisdom  to  the  student  of  life  is 
in  biography.  I  do  not  say  history,  because  we  are  now  con- 
cerned not  with  the  corporate  but  with  the  individual  life  of 
men.  And  by  far  the  most  important  part  of  biography  is 
autobiography;  not  what  some  observer  or  compiler  may  say 
about  a  man  but  what  the  man  himself  reveals  of  his  own 
inner  life.  In  most  biographies  that  are  worth  the  reading 
there  are  brief  passages — perhaps  only  one  or  two  in  a  volume — 
which  are  so  significant,  so  eye-opening,  that  not  only  does  the 
volume  get  its  right-to-be  from  them,  but  the  man  himself 
seems  to  have  lived  just  to  get  these  few  words  uttered. 
Such  were  Walter  Scott's  well  known  words  on  his  death-bed, 
that  there  is  nothing  worth  living  for  but  to  be  good ;  such  was 
Darwin's  confession  that  by  long  neglect  of  his  spiritual 


WHO  WILL  SHOW    US  ANY  GOOD          291 

faculties  they  had  become  atrophied  and  he  had  lost  the  use 
of  them. 

This  is  why  the  thinking  world  waits  impatiently  for  the 
lives  of  such  men  as  Tennyson  and  Phillips  Brooks,  and  why 
when  they  appear  their  letters  and  conversations  are  what 
we  read  most  eagerly ;  for  there  we  get  nearest  to  the  soul-life, 
to  the  secret  of  individuality  and  power.  This  too  reconciles 
us  to  the  providence — the  unequal  and  unfair  providence, 
it  may  seem — which  permits  some  men  to  tower  so  far  above 
the  level  of  the  rest  of  us,  that  out  of  their  ampler  endowments 
and  richer  experience,  great,  helpful  influences  may  come  to  us 
for  the  guidance  of  life.  But  by  far  the  most  fruitful  biography 
is  that  which  we  get  by  personal  acquaintance  with  men  who 
have  a  deep  experience  of  life.  Not  seldom  one  hour's  contact 
with  a  greater  soul,  more  richly  endowed,  and  of  wider  experi- 
ence, has  made  life  a  wholly  different  thing  to  a  soul  that 
came  under  its  influence.  How  we  all  yearn  to  meet,  or  wish 
we  could  have  met,  certain  men,  of  whom  we  have  the  feeling 
that  they  could  help  us  out  of  some  of  the  perplexities  of  our 
thought  and  life!  It  is  more  than  eagerness  over  a  celebrity 
which  makes  one  say,  "I  saw  Virgil,"  and  another,  "And 
did  you  see  Shelley?"  and  which  makes  us  envy  above  all 
men  living  or  dead  those  who  heard  the  Master  himself,  or 
St.  Paul,  or  St.  John;  and  sympathize  with  those  who  crowded 
and  jostled  each  other  that  they  might  but  touch  the  hem  of 
Jesus'  garment,  or  get  within  the  shadow  of  St.  Peter  passing 
by. 

And  again,  the  lessons  of  life  are  enshrined  in  literature; 
in  the  best  literature  of  the  ages,  and  especialty  in  the  best 
poetry;  and  let  no  one  be  surprised  if  I  say  the  best  fiction, 
remembering  that  in  all  the  ages  holy  men  of  God  have  spoken 
as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost  in  fiction,  in  symbol 
and  parable,  and  drama.  That  which  gives  literature  its 
chief  significance  and  value  to  man  is  that  it  is  the  recorded 
experience  of  the  noblest  natures.  Matthew  Arnold  has  de- 


292  THE  VERY  ELECT 

fined  poetry  as  the  criticism  of  life;  perhaps  if  he  had  lived  now 
he  would  have  adopted  a  newer  and  happier  phrase,  the  ap- 
preciation of  life.  The  older  literature  is  largely  tragic;  the 
soul  struggling  with  the  deep  problems  of  life  without  a  clear 
voice  from  heaven  to  assure  us  that  God  is  love  and  that  it  is 
eternally  well  with  the  righteous.  The  later  literature  leads 
into  the  promised  land  by  the  pillar  of  cloud  and  fire,  searches 
and  illumines  the  darker  places  of  life,  and  floods  all  the  spaces 
of  human  experience  with  the  light  of  a  hope  that  is  full  of 
immortality.  The  deepest  thought  on  human  life  now  finds 
expression  in  poetry,  just  as  in  the  older  time  it  found  expres- 
sion through  prophecy — which  after  all,  was  but  one  form  of 
poetry,  the  impassioned  utterance  of  truths  so  deeply  felt  that 
to  declare  them  was  a  mission.  If  today  a  man  feels  that  he 
has  a  message  to  deliver,  some  new  solution  of  the  old,  hard 
problems  of  life,  some  new  and  brighter  conception  of  life's 
possibilities;  or  if  the  growing  thought  and  enlarging  experience 
of  mankind  in  general  gradually  evolves  some  new  conviction 
or  faith,  how  does  this  new  thought  get  currency  and  access 
to  the  mind  and  heart  of  men?  Sometimes,  though  rarely, 
by  means  of  the  pulpit,  when  a  great  preacher  like  Robertson, 
or  Beecher,  or  Bushnell,  or  Phillips  Brooks  persuades  the 
people  to  listen  and  ponder  and  appropriate  and  disseminate 
the  great  truths  which  they  utter.  But  usually  the  great 
epoch-making  truth  gets  its  utterance  through  a  poem  or  a 
story.  The  men  who  have  done  most  to  give  to  nineteenth- 
century  life  its  peculiar  shape  and  tinge,  have  been  Walter 
Scott,  Wordsworth,  and  Tennyson;  the  first  by  lifting  common 
life  out  of  its  prosaic  dulness  and  imparting  to  it  zest  and 
romance,  and  a  breezy,  healthy  activity;  the  second,  Words- 
worth, by  restoring  the  long-lost  but  ever  natural  connection 
between  man  and  the  nature  which  surrounds  him  and  is  in 
sympathy  with  him;  and  Tennyson,  by  adjusting  thought 
and  feeling  and  life  to  the  new  and  deeper  philosophy  which 
is  the  product  of  our  age.  To  how  many  persons,  for  example, 


WHO  WILL  SHOW  US  ANY  GOOD  293 

has  'In  Memoriam'  brought  comfort  to  perplexing  doubt, 
the  larger  hope  with  the  larger  horizon,  and  a  reconciliation 
of  inquiry  and  faith,  which  for  them  changed  the  aspect  and 
relations  of  everything  in  the  life  that  now  is  and  in  that 
which  is  to  come! 

But  the  Psalmist's  answer  to  his  own  question  brings  us  still 
more  into  the  heart  of  things.  "  Who  will  show  us  any  good? 
Lord,  lift  thou  up  the  light  of  thy  countenance  upon  us." 
Life's  paths  may  have  the  light  of  God  upon  them,  and  then, 
though  not  always  clear  and  bright,  they  are  safe,  and  they 
lead  up  to  brightness  beyond.  Here  we  reach  the  principle 
of  faith  in  the  conduct  of  life.  When  science  and  history  and 
poetry  have  done  for  us  all  they  can,  they  still  leave  untold 
much  of  the  mystery  of  life;  we  are  still  often  tempted  to  say 
"  Behold  we  know  not  anything.  We  are  but  children  crying 
in  the  night."  And  yet  we  believe  that  outside  of  us,  above 
us  and  beyond  us  and  all  around  us,  is  an  infinity  of  wisdom, 
of  just  the  kind  of  wisdom  we  need  and  crave,  if  only  we  could 
draw  upon  it.  And  so  we  reach  out  toward  it,  we  send  up 
longing  desires  after  it,  we  open  our  souls  to  receive  it,  and  we 
believe  it  comes  to  us,  and  we  call  this  attitude  faith.  We 
believe  that  we  have  a  natural  affinity  with  higher  intelligence 
and  nobler  feeling,  and  grander  will,  and  we  believe  that  it  is 
possible  to  get  into  a  sort  of  electric  connection  with  this 
diviner  life,  and  to  have  our  own  being  filled,  and  greatened, 
and  exalted,  and  glorified,  by  the  inflow  of  this  divine  wisdom 
and  power  and  love.  All  the  great  souls  of  our  race  have 
believed  this,  and  have  felt  and  known  that  the  life  which  they 
lived,  the  life  of  intellect  and  heart  and  will,  was  something 
beyond  their  own,  something  which  they  have  described  by 
different  words,  but  all  in  a  way  which  recognized  a  divine 
inflow  of  knowledge  and  power;  and  they  have  said,  "I  think 
thy  thoughts  after  thee,  0  God;"  they  have  said,  "I  hear  a 
voice  ye  cannot  hear,  I  see  a  hand  ye  cannot  see;" — they  have 
said,  "I  have  heard  the  word  of  God,"  and  "I  stand  here  and 
cannot  otherwise — God  help  me!" 


294  THE  VERY  ELECT 

The  man  of  faith  believes  that  this  world  is  very  dear  to 
God;  that  however  many  other  worlds  he  may  have  made  and 
peopled,  he  certainly  loves  this  world  and  the  human  creatures 
who  live  in  it;  that  he  yearns  over  his  children  here  like  as  a 
father;  that  he  has  always  been  and  still  is  in  constant  com- 
munication with  them;  that  he  has  inspired  holy  men  to  reveal 
something  of  his  power  and  wisdom  and  love  in  such  a  way  as 
to  help  and  cheer  them  in  the  way  of  life;  and  chief est  of  all 
his  proofs  of  interest  in  us,  he  has  put  all  of  himself  that  our 
human  nature  could  bear  in  co  the  person  and  life  of  him  who 
was  Son  of  God  and  Son  of  Man.  And  in  this  faith,  in  the 
belief  that  he  may  have  and  does  have  God's  true  and  very 
guidance  and  help,  in  the  Bible,  in  the  work  wrought  by  Jesus 
Christ,  in  the  present  help  of  God's  Holy  Spirit,  he  thinks, 
and  plans,  and  works,  every  day,  and  always,  and  everywhere, 
throughout  his  earthly  life.  As  distinguished  from  men  who 
do  not  have,  and  live  by,  this  faith,  he  is  sometimes  called  a 
mystic:  and  in  so  far  as  this  term  implies  that  he  believes,  and 
acts  on  the  belief,  that  things  unseen,  and  intangible,  and 
unverifiable  by  sense  or  understanding  are  real,  are  the  most 
real  of  all  things,  and  do  really  afford  the  best  light  to  walk  in 
by  day,  and  the  best  stars  to  steer  by  at  night,  then  he  is 
indeed  a  mystic.  And  if  we  will  think  of  it,  the  best  men  we 
know  are  mystics;  and  all  the  great  souls  are  mystics;  and  the 
natures  and  the  lives  that  have  this  mystical  quality  in  them 
in  large  measure,  mingled  duly  with  the  more  prosaic  and 
terrestrial  elements,  but  yet  dominant  and  supreme  in  the 
conduct  of  life,  are  the  men  whom  we  all  admire  and  honor 
and  would  gladly  follow  if  we  could;  the  men  who  dare  grandly, 
the  men  who  do  the  things  other  men  call  impossibilities,  the 
men  who  make  up  the  list,  and  are  always  adding  to  the  list 
begun  in  the  eleventh  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
men  of  whom  the  world  is  not  worthy,  but  who  have  made  the 
world  what  it  is,  and  are  making  and  are  going  to  make  the 
world  more  and  more  the  world  God  had  in  mind  when  he 


WHO  WILL  SHOW  US  ANY  GOOD  295 

made  it,  and  the  world  Christ  thought  it  worth  his  while  at 
infinite  cost  to  redeem. 

Have  I  implied  in  all  this  that  the  wisdom  needed  for  the 
conduct  of  life  is  something  profoundly  difficult,  so  difficult 
that  life  is  a  great  hazard,  so  that  only  a  few  exceptional  souls 
can  get  so  much  of  the  secret  of  life  as  shall  enable  them  to 
live  worthily?  Yes,  as  I  have  already  said,  life  is  a  problem 
to  be  mastered,  is  an  equation  of  many  unknown  quantities 
to  be  solved;  is  and  always  will  be,  a  most  profound,  and  most 
baffling,  and  partly  for  this  reason  a  most  intensely  interesting, 
mystery.  But  life  as  a  philosophy  to  be  studied  is  one  thing; 
life  to  be  humanly  lived  is  another  thing.  Say  not,  Who  shall 
ascend  into  heaven,  or  descend  into  the  deep  to  fetch  us  this 
wisdom;  it  is  nigh  thee,  even  in  thy  mouth  and  hi  thy  heart. 
In  a  German  tale  a  youth  goes  out  from  his  home  into  the  wide, 
unknown  world,  carrying  all  his  effects  in  a  little  bundle  into 
which  a  stray  leaf  has  got,  containing  three  verses  of  Scripture, 
and  amid  all  his  wanderings  and  troubles  one  or  another  of 
these  three  always  brings  to  him  the  warning,  the  cheer,  the 
guidance  which  he  needs.  There  are  a  few  great  and  com- 
prehensive Christian  principles  which  thoroughly  believed 
in  and  lived  by  will  infallibly  ensure  the  success  of  life.  If 
I  were  to  name  them  you  would  exclaim:  "Why,  every  child 
knows  these.  We  didn't  need  a  four  year's  college  course  and 
a  great  academic  function  at  the  end  of  it,  to  teach  us  these 
truisms."  For  all  that,  they  are,  I  can  assure  you,  the  last 
attainments,  the  height  and  flower  of  human  knowledge. 
And  do  we,  do  any  of  us,  do  the  best  of  us,  really  know  them? 
The  first  is  that  the  supreme  good  in  life  is  to  be  good;  that 
not  to  be  rich,  and  strong,  and  wise,  and  happy,  but  to  be  good, 
is  the  best  of  all  things,  better  even  than  to  live  forever;  better 
to  be  good  for  a  short  life  here  or  hereafter  than  to  be  not  good 
for  a  longer  time  here  or  hereafter;  that  goodness  is  better 
than  everlastingness.  Secondly,  that  the  ideal  and  model  of 
goodness  is  God,  the  Being  we  look  up  to  and  worship;  that 


296  THE  VERY  ELECT 

to  love  and  worship  the  perfect  Being  is  to  put  life  in  its  right 
relations  to  the  supreme  life,  and  so,  and  so  only,  to  make  its 
higher  possibilities  actual,  to  bring  the  divine  into  the  human 
and  so  transform  the  life  which  were  otherwise  merely  animal 
and  sensual  into  the  spiritual  and  the  divine.  And  thirdly, 
that  the  way  to  do  this,  the  only  way  by  which  it  is  feasible, 
is  to  have  the  help  of  God  himself,  of  God's  Holy  Spirit  bring- 
ing us  into  living  relation  with  Jesus  Christ,  our  Teacher,  Re- 
deemer, Saviour,  Friend. 

And  in  this  light  we  see  the  merit  of  faith  and  of  the  life  of 
faith.  It  is  not  a  mere  shrewd  calculating  of  probabilities  and 
casting  in  our  lot  with  the  probably  winning  side.  It  is  such 
a  sympathy  with  the  good,  and  with  God  as  the  personification 
of  the  good,  and  with  Jesus  Christ  as  the  manifestation  of  the 
eternal  good,  that  we  are  willing  to  risk  everything,  and  if 
need  be  surrender  everything,  for  the  sake  of  that  with  which 
we  sympathize.  A  man  cannot  in  this  chequered  life  believe 
that  all  the  advantages  are  with  goodness,  unless  he  is  in  full 
sympathy  with  goodness,  come  what  may.  "  Whosoever," 
says  Jesus  Christ,  "is  willing  to  lose  his  life  for  my  sake,  the 
same  shall  save  it;"  and  he  means  thereby  that  the  only  way 
in  which  to  find  and  get  the  fullness  of  a  human  life  is  to  give 
it,  to  give  ifc  away  if  you  please,  for  his  sake  and  as  he  wills. 

ADDRESS  TO  THE  CLASS 

Life,  at  twenty-two  years  of  age,  with  a  college  course  fairly 
well  improved  behind  it,  and  a  future  radiant  with  possibilities 
before  it,  is  well  nigh  the  most  interesting  moment  in  human 
experience.  Perhaps  you  have  looked  forward  to  graduation 
as  a  gladsome  and  frolic  time.  You  find  it  otherwise.  Unless 
I  overrate  your  depth  and  sincerity  you  find  these  passing 
hours  among  the  soberest  of  your  lives.  The  choice  of  a  call- 
ing; the  spot  of  earth  on  which  your  life  will  be  lived;  the  plan 
of  your  life,  its  spirit,  its  altitude,  its  range,  its  meeting  with 
other  lives,  especially  with  one  other  life — all  these  queries 


WHO  WILL  SHOW  US  ANY  GOOD  297 

vaguely  and  subconsciously  present  to  you,  make  thought  in 
these  days  half  a  delicious  dream  and  half  a  sense  of  over- 
powering responsibility.  It  is  not  a  time  when  one  can  follow 
Sydney  Smith's  advice  to  "take  short  views,"  or  with  Newman 
"not  ask  to  see  the  distant  scene."  I  am  sure  you  would 
rather  stand  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops  and  see  as  far 
and  as  clearly  into  life  as  human  vision,  even  as  far  as  human 
faith  can  penetrate. 

My  message  to  you  today  is,  that  you  can  see  the  great 
realities  of  life  if  you  will  only  look  earnestly  for  them,  as 
clearly  as  you  might  have  seen  Mount  Mansfield  this  morn- 
ing— as  clearly  as  you  might  have  seen  Arcturus  last  night. 
The  accidents  and  incidents  and  circumstances  of  life  we  may 
not  foresee,  the  great  outstanding  features  of  it  we  may — we  can 
foresee  them  because  we  can  determine  them.  We  can  foresee 
lives  made  up  of  fidelity,  and  courage,  and  service,  and  faith 
in  the  eternal  verities  and  the  fruits  of  such  faith,  because  we 
can  determine  by  God's  gracious  help  they  shall  be  such  lives. 
That  they  shall  be  bright  and  serene  and  filled  with  content 
and  joy  we  cannot  foresee,  because  we  cannot  by  our  own  wills 
make  them  so.  Your  classmates,  who  have  gone  to  posts  of 
hardship  and  danger,  and  whom  with  those  from  other  classes 
we  remember  with  our  affectionate  regard  today,  can  be,  and 
we  believe  they  will  be,  brave  and  loyal  and  faithful  to  duty, 
but  we  cannot  be  sure  that  they  will  escape  bullets  and  shells 
and  pestilence  and  come  back  to  us  safe  and  sound.  We  can 
only  commend  them  to  God  and  leave  them  in  his  hand.  But 
the  best  thing  in  life  is  not  to  be  safe  and  comfortable  and 
jocund;  it  is  to  be  true  and  faithful,  and  high-minded,  and  to 
love  God  and  do  good. 

Now  I  deem  it  a  great  satisfaction  that  I  can  stand  before 
you  this  day,  and  speaking  in  the  name  of  the  University  and 
for  all  my  colleagues,  can  say  with  all  confidence  and  with 
your  full  assent,  that  we  have  taught  you  to  put  your  confi- 
dence in  the  things  that  are  real  and  true,  the  deep  and  the 


298  THE  VERY  ELECT 

high  things  of  life,  and  not  in  the  things  that  are  false  and  triv- 
ial and  superficial  and  scenic.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest  bene- 
fits of  a  course  of  liberal  training  that  it  teaches  this  distinc- 
tion and  confers  the  habit  of  making  it — to  discriminate,  to 
appreciate,  to  pursue  the  things  that  are  really  praiseworthy— 
the  things  that  are  really  worth  living  for  and  striving  for  with 
all  one's  might,  and  I  have  tried  to  show  you  in  what  kind  of  a 
life  these  studies  and  activities  culminate,  in  a  life  of  faith 
in  the  highest  and  the  best,  and  in  the  virtues  and  services 
and  consecrations  in  which  such  a  life  is  fruitful.  If  it  should 
be — which  God  forbid — that  this  state  of  war  should  continue 
and  broaden  out  into  a  condition  which  would  lay  a  great 
burden  upon  the  heart  and  conscience  of  our  people,  then  as 
in  former  times,  we  should  expect  that  students'  patriotism 
and  students'  heroism  would  show  what  virtues,  what  ideals, 
college  life  generates  and  fosters.  But  whether  in  peace  or 
war,  in  the  home,  in  the  professions,  in  the  industries,  life  is, 
and  should  be  regarded  by  us  as  being  an  opportunity  for 
living,  for  entering  more  and  more  into  the  fullness  of  life; 
the  life  of  knowledge,  of  faith,  of  power,  of  service;  the  life 
of  God's  children  and  Christ's  friends  and  fellow-workers, 
the  life  which  partaking  of  his  life  is  at  once  the  life  truly 
human  and  the  life  divine. 


LEADERS   OF   MEN 

Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  I  took  thee  from  the  sheepcote,  from 
following  the  sheep,  to  be  ruler  over  my  people.  II  Samuel,  vii:  8. 

THIS  is  so  frequent  an  occurrence  in  human  experience,  the 
calling  of  men  from  the  sheepcote  to  national  leadership,  that 
it  has  become  a  commonplace  of  moralists.  But  it  never 
ceases  to  be  an  impressive  fact,  and  may  well  be  studied  for 
the  instruction .  with  which  it  is  charged.  The  callings  of 
Divine  Providence  rest  on  good  reasons  which  we  may  well 
seek  to  discover.  Why  are  shepherds  of  sheep  so  often  called 
to  be  kings  of  men? 

I.  Let  us  try  to  get  the  essential  out  of  that  which  is 
incidental  in  the  fact  under  review.  The  pastoral  calling  stands 
for  much  in  itself.  It  is  human  life  as  first  organized,  social 
life  in  its  freshness  and  simplicity.  Idealized  in  after  ages  it 
inspires  the  poetry  of  the  idyl  and  the  pastoral.  When  life 
becomes  luxurious  and  corrupt,  a  Tacitus  or  a  Rousseau  recalls 
the  pastoral  life  to  men's  imagination,  and  it  becomes  the  fash- 
ion to  mimic  its  simplicity  and  innocence.  But  that  which  is 
good  in  the  pastoral  life  takes  on  a  larger  good  in  the  more 
developed  agricultural  life  with  its  fixed  homes,  its  seedtime 
and  harvests,  its  granaries  and  fruits.  God  calls  men  to 
leadership  also  from  the  furrow,  from  the  harvest  field,  from 
the  garden  and  the  vineyard.  And  we  cannot  stop  here.  From 
every  humble  calling  in  life  men  have  been  advanced  to  high 
station — from  fishing  and  tent-making,  from  typesetting  and 
rail-splitting,  from  the  tanner's  vat  and  the  shoe-maker's 
bench,  from  the  sailing  craft  and  the  ferry  boat,  from  opening 
and  shutting  of  a  steam  valve,  from  a  hundred  arts  and 
industries.  And  was  not  the  world's  supreme  leader  taken 
from  the  bench  of  the  carpenter? 

299 


300  THE  VERY  ELECT 

But  we  would  make  a  great  though  common  mistake,  if  we 
should  conclude  from  these  facts  that  the  larger  life  is  a  soil 
in  which  the  masterful  virtues  cannot  grow.  This  life  also 
has  furnished  to  mankind  its  share  of  leaders.  The  noble 
families  of  the  nations  have  had  their  representatives  in  the 
fields  where  great  deeds  have  been  wrought.  Noblesse 
oblige  has  been  not  only  a  cry  but  a  power.  We  look  espe- 
cially to  this  life  for  certain  qualities  essential  to  the  highest 
manhood,  for  what  we  call  the  chivalrous  qualities,  courtesy, 
refinement,  a  delicate  sense  of  the  respect  due  to  others, 
toleration,  frankness,  charity.  But  these  are  counsels  of  per- 
fection, not  fundamental  principles,  flowers  rather  than  roots 
of  character.  A  man  can  have  them  and  not  be  a  leader. 
The  prime,  essential,  indispensable  virtues  and  qualities  which 
make  strong  and  prevailing  manhood  and  womanhood  are  of 
another  order.  What  are  they?  Why  do  we  look  for  them, 
why  does  God  himself  seem  to  find  them  more  frequently,  in 
some  callings  than  in  others,  and  how  can  we  retain  them  as 
life  becomes  more  complex  and  artificial? 

II.  We  shall  very  soon  in  this  quest,  I  think,  reach  the 
conclusion  that  what  we  call  character  depends  largely  on  the 
existence  and  paramountcy  of  a  few  simple  primordial  virtues 
which  are  within  the  reach  of  all,  not  dependent  on  special 
gifts  or  opportunities.  They  are: 

1.  The  Economic  virtues:  industry,  thrift,  sobriety,  includ- 
ing also  an  instinctive  and  persistent  horror  of  waste,  waste  of 
substance,  of  time,  of  opportunity,  of  life,  of  self.     A  teacher, 
an  employer  of  men,  can  usually  pick  out  those  who  are  fore- 
ordained to  promotion  and  success.     They  are  those  who  are 
toiling  upward  while  their  companions  loiter  and  dawdle  and 
sleep.     One  great  advantage  which  the  shepherd  lad  and  the 
boy  from  the  artisan's  family  have  is  that  these  are  virtues  of 
necessity  to  them  and  having  been  once  acquired  are  available 
in  other  and  higher  affairs. 

2.  Next  are  the  Domestic  virtues:  love  of  kin,  fidelity  to 


LEADERS  OF  MEN  301 

home  and  friends  and  neighbors,  the  respect  of  the  sexes  for 
each  other  and  for  the  sanctity  of  marriage.  Not  only  are 
these  virtues  hi  themselves,  but  they  safeguard  all  other 
virtues.  One  who  keeps  himself  in  close  touch  with  father 
and  mother  and  sister,  who  feels  that  everywhere  kind  eyes 
and  kind  hearts  are  following  him  and  that  to  bring  gladness 
to  those  dear  eyes  and  hearts  would  be  the  greatest  joy  to  him, 
will  never  go  far  astray  and  may  even  for  their  sake  do  things 
beyond  himself. 

3.  Again,    the  Patriotic  virtues.     We  have  seen  in  this 
country — and  have  read  the  same  story  over  and  over  again  in 
the  history  of  other  countries — how  strong  a  force  hi  the 
development  of  character  is  the  principle  of  patriotism;  how 
it  sobers,  steadies  and  enlarges  manhood,  and  womanhood 
too;  how,  when  the  emergency  comes  which  rouses  patriotic 
feeling,  it  suddenly,  in  a  single  day,  changes  a  boy  into  a  man, 
a  girl  into  a  woman;  how  it  pushes  aside  with  a  Dante-like 
contempt  those  who  can  only  carp  and  jeer  while  others  do 
the  fighting  and  the  work,  and  steps  out  into  the  arena  of 
strife  ready  to  dare  all  and  do  all  for  some  just  and  holy  cause. 

4.  And,  crowning  all,  the  Religious  virtues,   those  which 
have  their  source  in  religion,   and  especially  hi  what  the 
Scriptures  call  the  fear  of  God,  which  does  not  mean  dread  of 
God,  terror  in  the  thought  of  God,  and  yet  is  not  the  same  as 
the  love  of  God,  which  is  a  high  attainment,  the  outcome  of 
experience  and  reflection  and  prayer;  but  that  primary  right 
feeling  toward  God  which  is  made  up  of  awe  and  reverence 
and  devoutness,  the  feeling  toward  God  which  men  have  who 
get  their  religion  from  nature  and  much  personal  thought  and 
the  spirit  of  God,  rather  than  from  books  and  human  teachings. 
Other  environments  are  favorable  to  other  types  of  religion, 
beautiful  types  some  of  them — the  ascetic,  the  contemplative, 
the  mystic;  but  the  religion  which  tends  to  make  men  staunch, 
robust  in  practical  affairs,  good  at  need,  good  in  all  winds  and 
weathers,  is  the  kind  which  comes  through  the  experiences  of 
shepherds  and  tent-makers  and  fishermen. 


302  THE  VERY  ELECT 

III.  But  the  youths  that  have  had  this  training  in  the  pas- 
toral and  home-bred  virtues, — can  they  keep  it  in  the  larger 
life  which  opens  before  them?  No  doubt  the  life  of  freedom 
and  opportunity  endangers  these  virtues.  They  were  never 
more  sympathetically  portrayed  than  in  the  "Cottar's  Satur- 
day Night/'  and  yet  Burns  went  out  from  such  a  home  to 
encounter  the  temptations  of  luxurious  society  and  to  fall 
before  them.  The  son  of  the  man  whom  God  called  from  the 
sheep  cote  to  leadership  lost  the  fundamental  virtues  of  which 
we  have  spoken,  lost  his  strenuous  manhood  and  became  a 
voluptuary,  lost  domestic  virtue,  lost  national  pride  and 
loyalty  in  a  lax  cosmopolitanism,  lost  the  fear  of  God,  and  in 
consequence  descended  from  the  high  place  he  ought  to  have 
kept  to  be  a  roue*,  a  cynic,  a  trifler,  a  virtuoso  in  "  ivory  and 
apes  and  peacocks."  Men  doubtless  moralized  on  it  as  men 
do  now,  and  said,  "See  what  has  befallen  the  son  of  the  man 
whom  God  called  from  the  sheepcote  to  be  leader  of  Israel,  and 
know  that  wealth  and  prosperity  and  power  are  not  good  for 
man;  they  ensnare  and  corrupt  him;  it  were  better  for  him  to 
have  followed  the  sheep." 

But  is  this  so?  Is  such  moralizing  just?  Were  it  not 
strange  that  God  has  made  this  life  full  of  things  of  beauty  and 
made  us  eager  to  get  them,  has  made  us  capable  of  manifold 
lovely  arts  and  high  adornments  and  enrichments  of  life,  and 
made  these  things  the  rewards  of  virtue,  of  earnest  striving 
and  patient  well-doing,  and  then  has  put  his  curse  on  them 
and  made  them  agencies  for  our  corruption  and  undoing? 
Shall  we  bid  the  shepherd  lad  remain  in  his  sheepcote,  the 
blacksmith  stick  to  his  forge,  the  poet  live  on  in  his  cottage, 
lest  in  the  great  world  they  come  to  grief? 

No;  but  we  will  say,  "Be  the  King  if  you  can,  but  be  the 
Shepherd  King.  Be  the  United  States  Senator  if  you  can,  but 
keep  the  virtues  of  the  blacksmith's  home  in  the  senatorial 
life.  When  you  feel  that  the  society  around  you  is  growing 
artificial  and  intercourse  is  insincere  and  everything  sophisti- 


LEADERS  OF  MEN  303 

cated  and  unreal,  go  back  and  get  in  touch  again  with  the  sim- 
pler and  more  genuine  life  out  of  which  you  came.  As  the 
Queen  used  to  go  to  Balmoral  and  sit  by  the  ingle  of  her 
humble  cottagers  and  learn  useful  lessons  of  life;  as  Mr.  Lin- 
coln loved  to  have  a  chat  with  one  of  the  plain  men  from  among 
whom  he  came;  as  every  wise  statesman  consults  with  his 
constituents  back  in  the  country  homes;  as  the  divine,  learned 
hi  rabbinical  and  patristic  lore  gets  some  of  his  best  divinity 
and  his  best  sermons  by  talking  with  his  sexton  or  his  gardener; 
so  it  is  good,  it  is  wholesome  to  the  mind,  and  sanitary  to  the 
soul,  for  every  one  to  keep  connection  with  that  life,  whatever 
it  may  be,  which  is  nearest  to  nature  and  reality. 

Again,  we  will  bid  our  young  aspirants  cherish  the  spirit  of 
youth  and  cling  to  the  best  things  gained  in  youth.  Words- 
worth wished  that  his  days  should  be  joined  each  to  each  in 
natural  piety.  It  were  good  for  us  all  that  the  best  of  each 
period  of  life  should  pass  on  to  the  next.  It  were  good  to  keep 
as  long  as  possible  the  ideality  of  youth.  There  is  for  instance 
the  college  idealism.  One  who  has  had  the  great  privilege  of 
being  a  member  of  a  college  has  a  tie  which  binds  him  to  the 
conception  of  life  for  which  a  college  stands.  And  then  there 
are  one's  church  relations.  Most  right-minded  young  persons 
in  these  times  enter  into  church  relations.  They  do  this  in 
those  youthful  years  when  conscience  is  tender  and  active, 
when  the  heart  readily  responds  to  the  appeals  of  divine  love, 
and  the  will  rejoices  in  acts  of  holy  obedience.  It  is  good  to 
hold  fast  to  this  early  faith.  It  is  not  a  sign  of  superiority  to 
lose  it,  for  it  is  usually  lost  by  neglect.  In  these  stirring  times 
when  the  trumpet  is  ever  ringing  out  the  challenge,  Who  is 
on  the  Lord's  side?  it  is  good  to  feel  that  this  question  is  decided, 
that  one  is  committed,  and  pledged,  and  can  be  counted  on  in 
the  good  enterprises  in  which  the  Christian  Church  is  leader. 

And  this  brings  us  to  say  finally,  let  us  cultivate  a  religion 
which  puts  due  emphasis  on  the  ethical  and  practical  side  of 
human  life.  I  do  not  plead  for  an  undue  emphasis  on  this 


304  THE  VERY  ELECT 

side — to  the  disparagement  of  the  imagination,  the  emotional, 
the  mystic  elements  in  the  religious  life,  those  which  make 
men  devout  and  unworldly  and  saintly.  But,  strange  as  it 
may  sound,  these  are  the  easier  attainments  in  religion.  It 
was  easier  for  Solomon  to  make  that  sublime  prayer  at  the 
dedication  of  the  temple  than  to  live  a  blameless  life.  It  is 
easier  for  any  of  us  to  be  pious  than  to  be  honest.  But  hard  as 
it  is  to  be  honest,  to  be  true  to  that  in  us  and  above  us  which 
is  deepest  and  highest  and  best,  it  is  easier  with  religion  than 
without  it.  To  bring  heavenly  motives  down  to  help  us  in  the 
discharge  of  earthly  duties  is  one  of  the  holiest  offices  of 
religion.  Therefore  let  the  man  whose  integrity  is  in  danger 
of  being  overborne  by  conventionalities  seek  aid  in  a  religion 
which  is  strongly  realistic,  which  never  gets  away  from  the 
fear  of  God,  which  can  sing  and  soar  with  St.  Paul  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Ephesians  and  the  thirteenth  of  First  Corinthians,  but 
never  lets  go  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the  Epistle 
of  James;  which  so  requires  hard  work  during  six  days,  that 
Sunday  will  be  welcomed  as  a  day  of  real  rest;  which  sym- 
pathizes with  and  blesses  men  who  use  tools  and  ply  manual 
arts:  which  mellows  and  sanctifies  the  cares  and  troubles,  joys 
and  sorrows  of  family  and  kindred,  friends  and  neighbors; 
which  calls  no  human  art  or  relation  common  which  it  can  fill 
with  its  blessing  and  so  make  holy.  Thus  in  great  cities,  amid 
civilization  however  splendid,  in  society  however  luxurious, 
ministered  to  by  all  the  arts,  beset  by  all  the  corruptions  of 
modern  life,  young  men  and  maidens  may  keep  themselves 
as  simple,  and  pure,  and  true-hearted,  and  strong  as  in  the  days 
of  antique  virtues,  and  may  add  thereto  the  new  powers  and 
facilities  for  living  which  the  new  civilization,  essentially  a 
Christian  civilization,  has  put  into  their  hands  for  the  adorn- 
ment and  enrichment  of  their  lives. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

I  suppose  it  would  be  regarded  as  a  bit  of  baccalaureate 
flattery  to  assume  that  college  graduates  are  foreordained  to 


LEADERS  OF  MEN  305 

be  leaders  of  men.  As  individuals,  of  course,  they  are  not  all 
so  destined;  as  a  class  they  are.  More  and  more  in  our  time 
and  country  they  are  coming  to  be,  and  are  expected  to  be, 
leaders  in  the  communities  in  which  they  live.  Some  leaders 
of  few,  some  of  many.  When  a  man  emerges  into  public 
prominence  and  his  biography  is  given,  we  expect  to  be  told 
at  what  college  he  was  graduated.  This  implies  the  acknowl- 
edged potency  of  a  liberal  education  in  life.  But  it  implies 
much  more  than  that.  Graduation  in  a  college  of  high  grade 
selects  men  and  women  by  their  moral  more  than  by  their 
intellectual  qualities.  Many  are  called  but  few  are  chosen. 
Many  start  but  few  arrive.  A  hundred  enter  a  class  ana  fifty 
are  graduated.  Not  that  all  who  fall  out  by  the  way  fail 
because  they  are  unworthy  to  reach  the  end.  That  we  could 
noc  say,  remembering  those  who  have  been  with  you  for  a  time 
and  whom  you  miss  today.  But  in  general  in  our  American 
communities  the  struggle  for  survival  to  the  end  of  a  college 
course,  the  struggle  with  poverty  and  hardship  and  the  chances 
of  life,  is  a  moral  struggle,  and  success  means  the  survival  of 
the  qualities  that  make  up  strong  masterful  character.  And 
the  same  law  holds  all  through  life.  Success  in  any  high  sense 
is  moral  superiority,  the  ascendency  of  virtue.  And  the  virtue 
which  here  prevails  is  the  aggregate  of  the  simple  and  elemen- 
tary virtues  which  all  men  may  have  if  they  will.  What  I 
have  been  trying  to  do  for  you  today  is  to  glorify  in  your 
minds  these  simple  virtues,  to  help  you  to  see  that  they  make 
a  plain,  humble  life  bright  and  strong  and  even  noble,  and  that 
no  other  qualities  however  brilliant  can  in  any  life  supply  the 
lack  of  them.  You  will  be  quite  likely  to  meet  men  who  are 
not  college  men  and  who  yet  may  be  your  superiors — men  who 
will  do  more  for  your  art  or  profession,  more  for  invention,  or 
statesmanship,  or  philanthropy,  or  religion.  It  may  be 
because  they  will  have  more  genius  than  you;  but  more  prob- 
ably because  they  will  have  more  industry,  more  resoluteness, 
a  higher  purpose. 
20 


306  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Revolving  very  often  in  my  mind  during  my  many  years 
of  college  experience  the  question  of  the  relative  importance 
of  the  moral  and  the  intellectual  factors  in  the  product  which 
we  call  success  in  life — success  of  a  high  order,  I  mean — I  have 
come  to  the  deliberate  conclusion  that  they  stand  in  the  ratio 
of  at  least  three  to  one;  that  saying  nothing  about  heaven 
above  and  the  life  hereafter,  the  worth  of  a  man  or  a  woman 
here  and  now  is  one  part  intellect  and  three  parts  affection, 
conscience  and  will.  Has  one  a  brilliant  mind?  With 
adequate  moral  force  behind  it  and  within  it,  it  becomes  a 
mighty  power;  not  so  consorted  and  energized,  it  avails  little. 
Are  you  conscious  of  having  only  moderate  intellectual  gifts? 
You  can  triple  their  momentum  by  aid  from  the  moral  side  of 
your  nature  if  that  is  true  and  strong.  But  some  of  you  may 
say,  "I  do  not  aspire  or  care  to  be  a  leader  of  men.  I  am  con- 
tent to  slip  into  an  easy  place  and  go  through  life  without 
ambition  or  struggle  or  prominence."  It  is  too  late  for  you  to 
choose  that  position.  It  is  shut  against  you.  In  accepting 
the  great  trust  of  a  liberal  education,  in  consenting  to  receive 
from  society  this  loan  of  leisure  and  seclusion,  and  the  costly 
appliances  of  study,  you  have  undertaken  a  great  responsibility 
which  you  cannot  now  throw  off.  Noblesse  oblige.  You  are 
hereby  called  of  God  to  service,  to  influence,  to  the  labor  and 
dignity  of  leadership.  Your  college  expects  this  of  you.  It 
will  be  disappointed  if  you  do  not,  in  some  sphere,  do  some 
effective,  helpful,  honorable  work.  Your  Alma  Mater  will 
rejoice  with  the  great  joy  at  once  of  self-congratulation  and  of 
sympathy  when  she  hears  of  such  good  work  done  by  you. 
Go  with  her  blessing  and  prayers  and  come  again  to  receive  her 
felicitations  and  to  join  with  her  in  thanksgivings. 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE 

Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  of  God. 

Luke  iv :  4- 

THE  Baccalaureate  Discourse,  now  a  universal  function  in 
American  colleges,  permits  itself  a  choice  between  two  offices, 
either  of  them  appropriate  and  pertinent.  The  first,  the  more 
alluring  to  the  speaker  and  perhaps  the  more  approved  by  the 
general  college  public,  is  a  deliverance  from  the  college  stand- 
point upon  some  subject  which  for  the  time  being  has  wide- 
spread public  interest,  using  the  vantage  point  which  on  this 
one  day  of  all  the  year,  the  college  pulpit  enjoys  for  making 
college  idealism  heard  and  felt  in  the  great  world  of  affairs. 
In  this  view  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  forecast  the  themes  of 
this  day's  baccalaureates — that  they  will  sound  the  note  of 
alarm  in  view  of  recent  disclosures  in  the  realm  of  finance  and 
business,  and  taking  their  tone  if  not  their  text  from  John 
the  Baptist  in  the  wilderness  or  from  the  old  Prophets  of  Israel, 
they  will  avail  themselves  of  remonstrance,  invective  and  appeal 
to  awaken  a  new  passion  for  righteousness  among  our  people. 
While  this  species  of  address  could  hardly  be  overdone  if  done 
in  the  right  temper,  yet  considering  the  sufficiency  of  it  which 
is  assured,  and  the  possible  plethora  which  might  be  wearisome 
and  reactionary,  we  may  not  be  thought  recreant  to  any  public 
duty,  if  we  turn  our  thoughts  in  the  other  direction  permitted 
on  such  an  occasion,  and  try  to  help  these  young  persons,  whose 
interests  are  uppermost  in  our  minds,  to  get  some  helpful 
views  of  the  life  which  stretches  so  hopefully  before  a  young 
graduate  on  his  baccalaureate  Sunday.  Let  us  take  for  our 
theme  The  Spiritualization  of  Life. 

This  idea  is  just  what  the  college  once  stood  for.  It  is  what 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  after  which  our  older  colleges  were 

307 


308  THE  VERY  ELECT 

modeled,  still  stand  for;  what  a  few  New  England  and  a  few 
western  and  southern  colleges,  mainly  because  of  their  poverty, 
still  stand  for.  But  the  invasion  of  the  time-spirit  into  college 
life,  the  large  infusion  of  technical  and  utilitarian  studies  into 
the  curricula,  and  the  consequent  change  of  the  whole  college 
atmosphere  and  spirit,  raise  the  question  whether  it  can  be 
said  any  longer  that  our  colleges  are  the  refuge  of  idealism 
and  the  guardians  of  the  spiritual  life.  That  science  has  an 
outlook  upon  the  infinite,  that  the  arts  minister  to  liberal 
thinking  and  living,  we  most  thankfully  recognize.  No 
instructed  man  thinks  that  we  should  or  could  have  retained 
the  old  hierarchy  of  studies,  or  the  old  methods  in  any  studies, 
but  it  is  a  serious  question  whether  we  are  losing  the  idealism, 
the  humanizing  and  vitalizing  factors  of  education;  if  we  are 
not,  how  we  can  make  ourselves  secure  in  the  retaining  of 
them ;  if  we  are,  how  we  can  restore  and  perpetuate  them. 

What  do  we  mean  by  the  question?  Is  the  lack,  which  is  so 
much  lamented  in  certain  quarters,  a  fact,  or  only  a  danger; 
a  calamity  to  be  deplored,  or  only  a  theme  for  the  alarmist? 
Is  human  life  in  general,  among  civilized,  educated,  and 
Christian  peoples,  actually  growing  harder,  coarser,  or  at  least 
less  refined,  less  intellectual,  less  spiritual  than  it  was?  As 
resources  multiply,  does  a  relatively  equal  amount  go  into 
the  enrichment  of  life?  We  read  on  one  day  that  Congress 
has  voted  five  millions  of  dollars  for  a  battleship,  and  we  think 
how  many  colleges,  or  libraries,  or  hospitals,  or  parks,  this  sum 
would  have  provided;  but  on  the  next  day  we  read  that  a 
single  millionaire  has  invested  five  and  a  half  millions  in  a 
collection  of  pictures  and  we  are  partially  comforted.  Then 
again  we  bethink  ourselves  of  the  lavish  expenditure  which  in 
times  of  comparative  straitness  was  bestowed  on  the  great 
cathedrals,  on  the  art  treasures  of  Rome,  and  Florence,  and 
Venice,  and  again  we  wonder  whether  we  really  care  as  much 
for  the  higher  and  finer  things  of  life  as  these  peoples  did. 
And  even  if  we  do  not,  with  some  prophets  of  evil,  see  our 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE  309 

civilization  fast  tending  toward  the  moral  standards  of  Imperial 
Rome,  and  Pompeii  and  the  Paris  of  the  Jeunesse  Doree,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  lines  of  least  resistance 
tend  that  way ;  that  if  we  are  going  to  keep  the  best  things  of 
life  predominant  we  must  do  valiant  battle  for  them;  that 
the  men  of  light  and  leading  among  us  must  hold  perpetual 
levy  of  their  forces;  that  the  Church  must  summon  to  the 
work  all  who  will  be  on  the  Lord's  side;  that  the  prophets  must 
cry  aloud  and  spare  not;  and  that  institutions  of  learning  and 
all  educational  forces  shall  stand  and  work  and  sacrifice,  and 
if  need  be  suffer,  for  giving  primacy  and  supremacy  to  the 
things  of  the  spirit  and  the  claims  of  the  highest  human  think- 
ing and  living. 

Now  to  bring  these  generalities — hi  respect  to  which  we  are 
all  of  one  mind — down  to  more  definite  form,  what  are  some 
of  the  influences  which  we  may  summon  to  our  aid  in  the 
spiritualization  of  life,  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
community. 

First,  we  should  rightly  estimate  and  wisely  use  the  sense 
of  Beauty,  which  is  an  integral  and  universal  (even  where 
latent)  attribute  of  humanity.  There  is  no  surer  sign  of  God's 
presence  and  touch  in  creation  than  beauty — a  quality  in- 
definable, but  as  real  as  extension  or  color.  Two  classes  of 
persons  set  themselves  against  God's  ordinance  of  beauty; 
the  ascetic,  who  denies  himself  of  it  because  it  brings  pleasure, 
and  pleasure  to  him  means  sin;  and  the  dullard,  because  he 
has  no  eye  to  see  it  and  no  heart  to  enjoy  it.  Both  are  not  only 
mistaken ;  both  are  guilty  of  wrong.  One  English  poet,  Beattie, 
goes  so  far  as  to  question  whether  one  who  renounces  beauty 
may  hope  to  be  forgiven!  And  the  reason  why  such  renuncia- 
tion is  both  a  mistake  and  a  wrong  is,  that  because  the  sense 
of  beauty  adds  something  to  life,  to  both  its  quantity  and  its 
quality,  to  its  zest  and  its  fulness,  and  that  he  who  foregoes 
or  refuses  it,  robs  life  of  something  of  its  contents  and  its 
perfection.  Beauty  as  it  comes  from  God's  hand  and  heart 


310  THE  VERY  ELECT 

is  the  expression  of  his  love  for,  and  his  pleasure  in7  the  thing 
he  is  making  or  doing.  What  pleasure  God  must  have  had 
in  making  this  fair  earth  and  all  its  possible  beauties,  to  him 
present  and  actual! — the  trees,  the  flowers,  the  birds,  the 
clouds,  the  mountains,  the  starry  heavens,  and  above  all, 
strong  men  and  fair  women,  and  beings  of  a  higher  order, 
if  any  such  there  are.  This  beauty  is  God's  sign  manual  by 
which  he  says  to  all  beings  in  his  image,  "See  how  I  love  my 
works,  and  my  children,  and  all  the  operations  of  my  hand 
and  my  mind!  "  And  the  spirituality  which  we  put  into  life 
from  this  source  must  come  from  the  same  feeling  that  we  see 
in  God,  the  desire  to  put  delight  and  the  expression  of  it  into 
our  creation,  that  is,  into  our  work,  and  all  our  doing.  It  is 
possible  and  it  is  the  secret  of  a  joyous  life,  to  make  everything 
we  do,  and  even  life  as  a  whole,  a  work  of  art.  The  true  idea 
of  art  is  well  summed  up  in  one  sentence  of  Ruskin's:  "The 
moment  we  make  anything  useful  thoroughly,  it  is  a  law  of  our 
nature  that  we  shall  be  pleased  with  ourselves  and  with  the 
thing  we  have  made,  and  become  desirous  therefore  to  adorn 
and  complete  it  in  some  dainty  way  with  finer  art  expressive  of 
our  pleasure." 

We  spiritualize  work,  we  dignify  the  commonest  work,  we 
make  sweeping  fine,  as  Herbert  says,  when  we  do  anything  and 
everything,  first  with  conscience,  and  then  with  love,  and  with 
love  because  with  conscience,  and  with  beauty  because  with 
love.  That  which  is  made  with  joyless,  loveless  work,  is  sure 
to  be  ugly.  No  good  work  will  ever  be  done  by  those  who  hate 
their  work.  Such  a  spirit  will  always  shirk  and  defraud  and 
befoul  what  it  does.  In  his  noble  address  to  Labor  Unions 
in  Faneuil  Hall,  President  Eliot  told  the  men  that  they  were 
degrading  labor  by  presenting  it  to  themselves  as  something 
to  be  loathed  and  avoided.  Their  answer  was,  "We  work 
to  live — we  do  not  live  to  work."  Woe  be  to  any  of  us  if  we 
do  not  live  in  part  at  least  to  work,  as  the  Father  worketh 
hitherto,  and  Christ  works;  and  if  like  them  we  do  not  find 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE  311 

one  of  the  chief  satisfactions  of  life,  in  loving  and  moralizing 
and  spiritualizing  our  work.  Every  true  man  is,  with  respect 
to  his  total  life,  a  poet.  Every  true  life  is  a  work  of  imagina- 
tion, and  inspiration,  and  of  that  finest  and  noblest  art  in 
which  God  and  man  are  workers  together  for  perfection. 

Another  influence,  refining  life  and  elevating  it,  is  Liter- 
ature; I  do  not  say  books,  for  the  large  mass  of  books  is  not 
literature,  and  not  all  literature  is  in  books.  In  our  day  some 
of  the  best  literature  is  within  paper  covers,  and  with  no  covers. 
One  of  the  great  spiritual  needs  of  our  day  is  that  fine  instinct 
which  like  the  magnet  among  grains  of  steel  can  detect  and 
appropriate  the  true  literature  scattered  among  books  and 
periodicals  and  even  daily  newspapers.  Every  reader  of  biog- 
raphy must  have  remarked  the  effect  of  a  few  great  books 
in  the  formation  of  moral  ideals, — an  effect  produced  partly 
because  the  books  were  great,  and  partly  also  because  they  were 
few.  Where  did  Mr.  Lincoln  get  that  fine  appreciation  of 
what  is  becoming  in  thought  and  expression  which  he  showed 
in  his  Gettysburg  address  and  his  second  inaugural?  Where 
did  many  other  men  without  classical  training  learn  to  think 
and  write  in  what  Matthew  Arnold  calls  "the  grand  style," 
simple,  strong,  reserved,  effective?  Biography  almost  in- 
variably tells  us  that  in  youth  they  had  access  to  a  few  books 
which  were  great  literature,  the  Bible,  Shakespeare,  Bunyan, 
Johnson,  Milton,  Addison,  and  to  few  or  no  others.  These 
great  books  were  spiritualizing  influences.  They  kept  the 
mind  intent  upon  the  greater  things  of  life.  They  did  not 
revel  in  the  mean  and  paltry  and  belittling  themes  and  per- 
sonages of  the  world.  They  did  not  crowd  the  few  hours 
spent  in  reading  with  scenes  and  actions  which  were  best 
forgotten  or  never  known.  The  high  thoughts  and  pure 
imaginings  were  not  diluted  or  debased  or  excluded  by  a  lower 
order  of  associations  derived  from  inferior  books.  An  old 
Greek  poet  says  that  they  are  fools  who  know  not  that  the 
half  is  more  than  the  whole, — in  literature  we  might  say  the 


312  THE  VERY  ELECT 

tenth.  Ten  books,  the  Bible  heading  the  list,  turned  with 
daily  and  nightly  hand,  always  at  one's  elbow  for  filling  idle 
moments,  near  one's  pillow  for  sleepless  hours,  companions 
of  our  journeyings,  conned  over  and  over,  got  by  heart, 
assimilated  into  our  blood  and  tissue — this  is  one  of  the  most 
potent  means  of  spiritualizing  life.  And  this  is  so  because 
literature,  the  record  of  the  best  thoughts  of  the  best  men  in 
the  best  words,  is  vital;  is  as  Milton  says,  the  life-blood  of 
the  master  spirits,  and  as  such  conveys  life  to  those  spirits 
which  have  any  kinship  with  it.  It  is  a  great  day  in  the  life 
of  a  youth  when  the  right  book  finds  him,  and  begins  to  inspire 
him,  and  to  start  him  on  a  new  road  of  attainment  and  pur- 
pose. Happy  is  he  who  has  a  relay  of  such  books  waiting  for 
him  one  by  one,  as  he  can  overtake  them  in  his  intellectual  and 
spiritual  progress.  No  dull  days  need  he  fear;  no  questionable 
pleasures  need  he  resort  to  for  keeping  up  an  interest  in  life. 
He  has  one  of  the  best  safeguards  against  the  disillusions  to 
which  enthusiasm  is  subject  in  a  scoffing  environment,  one 
of  the  most  steadfast  supports  of  that  charity  which  believeth, 
endureth,  hopeth  all  things. 

Another  influence  which  nourishes  the  nobler  life,  is  choice 
Human  Fellowship.  Only  in  some  despondent  mood,  or  as 
the  protest  of  a  transient  vexation,  will  any  one  but  a  shallow 
misanthropist  say  with  Hamlet,  "Man  delights  me  not,  nor 
woman  neither."  For  every  seeker  after  the  best  things  for 
study  and  for  delight,  men  and  women  are  perennially  inter- 
esting. Not  only  humanity  in  the  abstract  but  actual  men 
and  women  will  repay  the  profoundest  study.  Even  the  men 
who  to  superficial  observation  are  commonplace  and  unin- 
teresting, have  within  them  the  possibilities  of  doing  and  suffer- 
ing, of  heroism  and  of  tragedy,  which  cannot  be  foretold. 
We  are  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made,  psychologically  as  well 
as  physically.  Psychology  is  only  just  beginning  to  claim  the 
prominence  it  deserves — is  beginning  to  find  out  that  of  all 
created  things  human  personality  is  the  most  mysterious, 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE  313 

the  most  interesting,  the  most  fruitful  of  surprises,  of  admira- 
tion, of  a  kind  of  awe.  The  most  famous  ode  of  the  Greek 
drama  is  a  confession  of  awe  in  view  of  the  capabilities  of 
man — worthy  to  make  a  trio  with  Hamlet's  exclamation, 
"What  a  piece  of  work  is  a  man!"  and  with  the  Psalmist's 
paean,  "Thou  hast  made  him  a  little  lower  than  the  angels 
(or  the  gods.)"  All  the  old  tragedians  and  the  Shakespeares 
and  the  Goethes  and  the  Hugos  and  the  Brownings  have  but 
shown  us  how  much  more  joy  and  sorrow,  comedy  and  tragedy, 
pathos  and  ecstacy,  are  yet  in  the  human  heart,  unrevealed 
and  waiting  for  other  Shakespeares  and  Goethes  yet  to  come. 
And  it  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  go  far  afield  to  find  men  and 
women  whose  fellowships  would  ennoble  and  enrich  and 
sweeten  our  lives.  Every  community  has  in  it  some  unique 
manhood  or  womanhood  which  it  were  well  worth  our  while 
to  cultivate  and  to  annex  to  our  human  experience.  There 
are  kinsmen  and  neighbors,  there  are  those  whom  we  are  shy 
of  and  who  are  shy  of  us  because  they  work  for  us,  or  trade 
with  us,  or  go  to  a  different  church,  who  have  traits  of  charac- 
ter, ranges  of  thought  and  affection,  which  would  endear  them 
to  us  and  make  our  fellowship  a  mutual  blessing,  if  we  knew 
each  other.  Often  after  men  and  women  have  died  we  find 
ou:  that  we  have  been  living  in  close  neighborhood  with  poets 
and  heroines  and  saints,  and  knew  it  not,  and  so  have  lost 
much  that  might  have  been.  On  our  own  street  or  the  next 
one,  around  the  nearest  corner,  may  be  living  a  man  or  a 
woman,  whom  to  have  known,  as  to  have  known  Lady  Eliza- 
beth Hastings,  were  a  liberal  education.  While  I  am  saying 
this,  some  who  hear  me,  I  hope  many,  are  saying  to  themselves, 
"That  is  true  and  I  know  it,  and  I  thank  God  for  it,  as  for  one 
of  the  greatest  blessings  in  life."  And  we  who  know  all  this 
so  well  say  to  these  young  persons  that  to  discover  these  choice 
souls,  to  know  how  to  appreciate  them,  to  be  willing  to  cul- 
tivate the  virtues  and  the  graces  which  will  make  us  worthy 
of  them,  this  surely  is  one  of  the  things  which  make  life  worth 


314  THE  VERY  ELECT 

living — which  spiritualize  and  ennoble  life  here,  and  make  the 
life  hereafter  to  be  a  perpetuation  and  enhancement  of  the 
best  we  have  here  and  now. 

Bringing  together  these  two  influences  in  soul-culture,  books 
and  men,  let  us  say  that  the  best  of  all  reading  is  biography, 
and  the  best  biography  autobiography;  not  that  kind  which  is 
written  large  for  the  world's  reading,  but  that  which  comes 
out  in  letters  and  in  confidences  treasured  in  the  memory  of 
friends,  heart  revelations,  uttered  with  no  thought  of  public 
review.  If  in  this  or  any  other  way  we  can  get  in  a  few  mem- 
orable words  a  good  man's  secret  of  life  and  can  learn  what  in 
God's  providence  that  life  was  lived  for,  we  have  made  a  real 
accession  to  both  the  philosophy  and  the  conduct  of  our  own 
life. 

And  this  brings  us  to  say  naturally,  and  finally,  that  the 
most  effective  of  all  agencies  for  the  spiritualization  of  life  is 
Religion.  This  effectiveness  we  can  readily  appreciate  when 
we  consider  that  for  certain  large  classes  of  people  it  is  almost 
the  only  source  of  the  influence  of  which  we  are  speaking,  and 
that  through  this  influence  these  people  do  actually  attain 
to  a  high  degree  of  spirituality  in  their  lives.  Take  for  example 
the  Scottish  peasantry.  Their  country  is  poor,  the  resources 
of  living  are  scanty,  their  lives  are  lives  of  hardship  and 
struggle,  but  what  people  have  more  of  the  comeliness  and 
grace  of  life?  Romance  hovers  over  every  purple  heath  and 
sparkles  in  every  tarn  and  lingers  in  every  glen.  Though  their 
bread  is  gotten  by  the  hardest,  they  do  not  live  by  bread  alone 
but  invoke  the  grace  of  hospitality  and  the  charm  of  high 
thinking  upon  the  meal  of  barley  bannocks.  Out  of  the  stern- 
est Calvinism  they  have  extracted  the  beautiful  home  life  of 
the  Cottar's  Saturday  Night.  And  all  this  is  because  they  are 
essentially,  through  and  through,  a  religious  people.  The 
same  is  true  in  varying  degrees  of  the  Tyrolese,  the  Savoyards, 
the  peasantry  of  France.  The  poetry  everywhere  underlying 
the  Puritan  character,  in  the  little  brothers  of  St.  Francis,  in  the 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE  315 

Moravians,  and  the  Cameronians,  and  the  Huguenots,  was 
the  offshoot  of  religious  faith.  Did  the  Cavalier  type  of 
piety,  which  also  had  its  glorious  expression  in  a  splendid 
national  character — did  it,  though  possessed  of  all  the  advan- 
tages for  noble  living,  did  it  produce  any  finer  spiritual  temper, 
any  more  beautiful  lives,  than  the  annals  of  Scottish,  and 
Huguenot,  Dutch,  and  New  England  Puritanism  can  show? 
If  one  were  to  ask  where,  among  what  class  of  people  in  history 
and  in  actual  life,  you  would  look  for  the  finest  humanism, 
in  distinction  from  the  mere  conventionalisms  of  culture  and 
conduct,  I  think  you  would  seek  in  two  places, — not  among 
the  classicists  of  the  Rennaisance  and  their  modern  dilet- 
tante representatives,  not  among  those  who  cultivate  the 
most  luxurious  art  in  their  homes  and  in  their  lives,  not  among 
those  who  array  the  scientific  spirit  against  religion  in  the 
name  of  a  freer  and  larger  spirit,  but  among  two  classes :  first, 
those  who,  however  busy  their  lives,  give  a  large  place  to  the 
intellectual,  the  religious  and  the  philanthropic  elements,  each 
in  due  proportion:  the  men  and  women  of  culture  who  are 
deeply  religious  and  whose  religion  is  not  selfish  but  diffusive 
and  benignant,  men  and  women  quite  likely  to  be  in  the  pur- 
lieus of  universities  and  churches,  but  found  also  in  the  thick- 
est of  the  business  and  political  world;  — and  a  second  class 
made  up  of  the  simple  and  humble  souls,  strong,  too,  and 
valiant  when  need  arises,  whose  study  is  much  upon  the  Bible, 
whose  chief  social  entertainment  is  in  the  prayer-meeting, 
whose  main  inspiration  comes  from  the  prayer-book  or  the 
breviary.  Bring  me  a  man  whose  life  has  been  enriched  by 
the  learning  of  the  ages,  whose  taste  is  refined  by  association 
with  the  purest  thoughts  and  noblest  imaginings  of  the  poets 
of  all  time,  whose  moral  ideas  have  been  chastened  and  ele- 
vated by  the  contemplation  of  the  true,  the  beautiful  and  the 
good,  and  I  will  bow  my  head  in  acknowledgment  of  the 
beauty  of  such  a  character.  But  if  the  element  of  religion  has 
been  entirely  left  out,  if  there  is  no  reverence,  no  awe,  no 


316  THE  VERY  ELECT 

adoration,  no  love  for  the  Supreme  One  as  Father,  Friend, 
Judge,  Redeemer,  Saviour,  there  will  be  something  which 
I  shall  miss,  and  the  absence  of  which  will  go  far  toward  spoil- 
ing the  character;  there  will  be  some  grossness,  some  hardness, 
some  unloveliness,  for  which  nothing  else  can  atone.  A  char- 
acter which  lacks  the  religious  elements  wants  that  which 
all  other  traits  need  in  order  to  come  to  their  best.  It  is  the 
one  thing  needful  for  making  along  with  other  necessary  things 
a  good  workman,  a  good  neighbor,  a  good  citizen,  a  good 
friend,  a  good  lover,  a  good  physician,  a  good  lawyer,  a  good 
writer  for  the  press,  a  good  business  man,  a  good  politician, 
a  good  teacher.  That  which  religion  gives  to  all  these  char- 
acters is  the  element  we  are  considering,  and  which  in  a  large 
and  vague  way  we  have  called  spirituality.  Is  there  a  man 
in  all  history  without  this  element  in  his  character  whom  any 
of  us  would  for  a  moment  think  of  proposing  as  a  model  for 
oneself  or  for  others?  We  will  not  be  narrow  in  our  concep- 
tion of  what  religion  is;  we  will  make  its  scope  large  enough 
to  include  every  influence  which  comes  into  thought  and  life 
from  the  highest  moral  source  which  is  to  us  conceivable; 
but  to  set  up  over  us  anything  lower  than  the  highest  con- 
ceivable standards,  even  though  we  are  far  from  attaining 
them,  is  to  idealize  something  less  than  the  best,  and  that 
were  our  reproach  and  our  shame.  If  there  is,  if  there  ever 
can  be,  any  humanity  higher  and  finer,  more  lovable,  more 
admirable,  than  the  humanity  portrayed  hi  the  Gospels,  com- 
mended and  urged  in  the  Epistles,  reproduced  in  the  saints 
of  all  the  Chri&tian  ages,  exemplified  in  one  or  a  dozen  or  a 
score  of  good  men  and  women  in  every  church,  whether  in 
Christendom  or  heathendom,  let  us  search  for  that  as  men  of 
old  sought  for  the  Holy  Grail;  but  until  that  vain  illusion 
becomes  a  reality,  let  us  try  to  learn  from  the  Beatitudes, 
and  from  Calvary,  and  from  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and  from 
the  thirteenth  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  and 
from  the  eleventh  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  how  to  make 


THE  SPIRITUALIZATION  OF  LIFE  317 

this  life  pure,  and  gentle,  and  loving,  and  brave,  and  resolute, 
and  faithful  unto  death,  and  so  ready  for  such  life,  the  same 
in  kind  and  higher  in  degree,  as  may  await  us  hereafter. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

In  fulfilment  of  my  promise  at  the  outset  I  have  tried  to 
present  some  views  of  life  which  may  be  helpful  to  you  in  what 
we  hope  will  be  the  long  future  of  your  own  lives.  And  now 
I  am  not  sure  that  I  could  have  better  discharged  the  public 
duty  of  the  occasion  than  by  the  role  I  have  chosen.  The 
question  being  how  to  promote  public  virtue,  to  raise  the  ethical 
standard,  to  purify  the  social  conscience,  what  after  all  is 
our  main  reliance  for  attaining  this  end?  Legislation  has 
reached  the  limit  of  its  efficiency  when  it  has  prevented  some 
of  the  worst  evils  of  society.  The  courts  define  and  punish, 
and  thus  in  a  measure  restrain,  wrong  doing.  But  laws  and 
courts  and  even  executive  vigilance  cannot  generate  honesty 
and  honor  and  high-mindedness.  "An  honest  man's  aboon 
their  might."  Let  legislation  and  jurisprudence  and  admin- 
istration be  perfect  in  their  place,  and  still  human  well-being 
will  depend  mainly  on  other  forces  and  other  influences.  Law, 
as  the  great  apostle  says,  makes  nothing  perfect.  What 
then  does  make  humanity  perfect?  The  same  apostle  says 
it  is  "the  bringing  in  of  a  better  hope,"  the  attraction,  the  per- 
suasive vision  of  a  noble  and  beautiful  life  shown  as  feasible, 
not  easy  but  possible,  and  worth  striving  for.  This  is  the 
secret  of  Christianity.  It  shows  us  what  human  life  may  be. 
It  shows  us  by  example  fundamentally,  essentially  and  in  the 
large,  in  Jesus  Christ, — evolutionally  in  characters  growing 
purer  and  finer  and  richer  as  the  years  and  the  ages  go  by; 
shows  us  how  divine  a  thing  human  life  may  be,  and  in  propor- 
tion as  men  and  women  get  this  vision  and  realize  it  in  them- 
selves and  in  the  social  groups  which  they  form,  does  public 
virtue  grow  from  good  to  better,  and  the  body  social  and  the 
body  politic  and  the  body  human  become  spiritually  better, 
and  therefore  socially  and  politically  better. 


318  THE  VERY  ELECT 

It  is  therefore  no  egotism  to  say  that  for  the  moral  better- 
ment we  are  so  clamoring  for  today,  society  is  more  dependent 
on  homes  and  schools  and  colleges  and  churches  than  on 
Congress  and  the  courts  and  the  executive.  What  they  do, 
with  much  more  self-consciousness  and  e*clat  than  would 
seem  to  be  necessary,  is  important,  and  we  hope  they  will 
do  it  thoroughly  and  well.  What  we  do  in  our  quieter  way, 
in  the  many  thousand  schools  and  in  the  five  hundred  colleges 
and  universities  in  America,  is  a  thousand  times  more  import- 
ant. One  good,  pure,  strong  sweet  life  of  man  or  woman  in  a 
community  does  more  for  virtue  and  character  and  human 
well-being  than  all  "revised  statutes." 

To  put,  then,  the  lesson  of  the  hour  into  a  word — let  us  all, 
each  in  his  own  sphere,  try  to  spiritualize  life — to  convert 
the  crude  and  gross  elements  which  are  delivered  unto  us, 
into  life's  finer  products — into  thought  and  sentiment,  and 
beauty,  and  love.  To  the  physician,  the  human  body  should 
appear  as  a  marvel  of  divine  art,  to  be  studied  with  reverence, 
to  be  handled  with  a  feeling  next  to  worship,  to  be  valued 
not  only  as  the  treasure  house  of  soul  but  as  in  itself  supremely 
admirable  and  precious.  Law  should  be  held,  not  as  a  mere 
contrivance  for  foiling  wrong-doers,  but  as  a  formulation  of  the 
ideal  relations  between  man  and  man.  The  church  is  the  home 
and  nursery  of  spiritual  brotherhood.  The  school  is  the 
guardian  and  transmitter  of  the  reverence  due  to  youth. 
The  home  is  the  sacred  resting-place  of  all  the  primitive  and 
essential  loves  and  virtues.  Business  affairs,  public  office, 
are  so  many  agencies  for  the  exploitation  of  the  higher  and 
finer  virtues,  if  only  the  finer  spiritual  temper  is  in  the  men 
themselves.  There  never  was  a  time  when  there  were  more 
such  men — never  a  time  when  still  more  of  such  men  were  so 
needed.  The  measure  of  the  success  of  this  University  is  the 
number  of  the  men  and  women  of  this  stamp  whom  it  sends 
out.  It  has  not  been  wanting  in  its  quota  in  the  past.  May 
you  all  help  it  to  keep  up  its  standard  and  its  effectiveness  in 
the  future. 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL 

"I  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil."  Matt,  v:  17. 

ON  THE  northeast  coast  of  Scotland  stood  in  the  sixteenth 
century  one  of  those  stately  Gothic  cathedrals  which  were 
the  contributions  of  Christian  faith  to  the  Christianity  of  their 
age.  It  was  of  vast  dimensions,  fitly  embodying  the  national 
spirit  of  worship  when  Scotland  was  a  great  nation.  It  had 
nave  and  aisles,  transept  and  choir,  groined  arches  and  foliated 
capitals:  it  had  rood-screen,  and  tabernacles,  and  niches  filled 
with  figures  of  patriarchs,  apostles,  and  martyrs,  such  as  the 
piety  of  those  ages  had  approved.  But  there  came  a  time,  and 
a  spirit,  and  a  man,  hostile  to  what  all  these  things  were 
supposed  to  stand  for,  and  on  a  certain  day,  amid  a  vast  con- 
course of  the  people,  a  fulmination  went  forth  from  the 
cathedral  pulpit  which  roused  the  passions  of  the  crowd  to 
such  a  fury  for  destruction  that  in  a  few  hours  one  of  the 
most  imposing  cathedrals  of  western  Christendom,  with  all 
its  structural  and  decorative  and  devotional  parts  and  appoint- 
ments, was  a  mass  of  ruins.  For  centuries  since,  men  of  all 
creeds  have  regretted  and  wished  undone  the  mischief  of  that 
mad  hour.  But  in  vain.  The  age  of  cathedral  building  had 
forever  gone.  There  remain  to  this  day  the  ruin,  the  regret, 
and  the  lasting  resentment. 

This  was  not  an  isolated  transaction.  It  was  only  one 
outbreak  of  a  general  movement.  And  the  general  movement 
of  that  time  was  not  anything  unique  in  human  experience. 
Image-breaking  has  been  a  recurrent  event  all  through  history. 
Abuses  present  themselves  in  affairs  social,  economic,  political. 
These  abuses  call  out  reforms  and  reformers,  some  remedial, 
some  destructive.  There  is  that  hi  human  nature  which 
instinctively  inclines  it  to  the  latter — to  the  destructive  method 

319 


320  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  reform.  Passion  is  much  more  easily  aroused  on  this  side. 
The  fruits  of  effort  seem  to  be  nearer,  the  rewards  of  success 
to  be  greater.  Impatience  is  a  motive  which  always  lies  near 
the  surface  of  feeling,  and  is  open  to  easy  appeal.  To  super- 
ficial observation  the  abuse,  the  wrong,  seems  to  go  down  with 
the  overturn  of  what  may  be  merely  incidental.  Destructive 
changes  will  always  be  in  favor  with  a  certain  large  social  group, 
and  in  a  certain  grade  of  social  development.  Indeed  it  is  a 
possibility  and  a  menace  at  all  times.  The  only  thing  lacking 
at  any  time  to  make  it  a  power  and  a  terror,  is  effective  leader- 
ship— a  leadership  which  is  in  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of 
destruction  rather  than  with  that  of  remedy.  There  are 
never  lacking  the  abuses  out  of  which  this  spirit  can  get 
material  for  a  blaze.  The  time  when  things  are  at  their 
worst  is  always  at  this  time.  If  things  are  allowed  to  go  on 
as  they  now  are — this  is  the  universal  language,  the  esperanto, 
of  agitation — irretrievable  ruin  is  immediately  before  us. 
This  is  no  time  for  caution,  for  conservatism,  for  reaction — it 
is  time  to  strike,  burn,  overturn,  destroy.  And  as  Cassius 
said  when  he  saw  the  tumult  arising:  " Mischief,  thou  art 
afoot;  take  thou  what  course  thou  wilt!" 

Let  us  give  the  destructive  reformers  the  praise  which  is 
their  due.  They  have  their  place  and  it  is  a  place  of  useful- 
ness, but  of  a  subordinate  and  humble  kind.  It  has  not  the 
exalted  merit  which  they  think  it  has.  It  does  not  need,  or 
display,  talents  of  a  high  order.  It  required  more  ability  to 
carve  one  leaf  of  one  foliated  capital  in  that  St.  Andrew's 
Cathedral  than  to  topple  down  a  whole  aisle  of  foliated  col- 
umns, or  to  arouse  the  rage  which  did  the  down-toppling.  It 
does  not  require  so  much  courage  as  it  sometimes  seems  to 
attack  abuses.  It  is  a  bid  for  popularity  which  rarely  fails  of 
more  or  less  success.  The  demagogue  knows  this  and  counts 
upon  it.  Newspapers — some  newspapers — thrive  upon  it. 
Have  you  some  scandal  to  air;  would  you  assail  some  repu- 
tation; attack  some  man  in  high  place;  assault  some  institu- 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL        321 

tion  in  good  standing;  you  may  have  a  large  place  in  "OUT 
crowded  columns."  But  still  the  fault-finder,  the  accuser, 
the  procurator-general  for  society,  is  useful.  Too  much  praise 
of  good  men  and  good  institutions,  too  much  admiration  of 
things  as  they  are,  would  induce  indolent  content,  and  would 
result  in  stagnation  and  reaction.  If  only  these  image- 
breakers  knew  what  images  should  not  be  destroyed,  and  if 
they  had  the  courage,  and  the  ability,  to  make  sure  that  in 
spite  of  clamor  and  demagogism  they  be  not  destroyed!  If 
John  Knox  could  but  have  stopped  that  destruction  when  it 
had  reached  due  bounds ;  if  those  virtuous  and  amiable  Giron- 
dists could  have  stayed  the  French  revolution  within  the  safe 
limits  they  would  have  chosen;  if  Pym  and  Hampden  and 
Falkland  could  have  recovered  the  liberties  of  Englishmen 
without  letting  loose  a  band  of  fanatics  who  destroyed  liberty 
faster  than  it  was  gained,  how  much  better  had  it  been  for 
France,  for  England,  for  Scotland,  for  law,  for  liberty,  for 
religion!  But  alas,  that  is  just  where  destructive  reform 
shows  its  weakness.  Anybody  can  start  an  iconoclastic  fury; 
not  even  John  Knox  could  stay  it.  Anybody  can  start  a 
run  on  a  perfectly  sound  bank;  it  takes  financial  skill  to  quiet 
it.  Jack  Cade  can  start  a  great  social  riot;  a  small  vine- 
grower  can  raise  a  rebellion  that  throws  France  into  a  turmoil; 
but  to  bring  back  peace  and  order  requires  a  statesman.  If 
men  ever  get  so  far  with  their  inventions  as  to  be  able  to  raise 
storms  and  tempests  in  the  heavens,  the  harder  task  will  be  to 
quell  the  storms  they  have  raised.  It  is  a  perilous  thing  to 
have  dealings  with  the  destructive  forces  of  nature — or  of 
society.  Reflection  comes  haltingly  into  the  arena  when  the 
conflict  is  on :  repentance  comes  too  late. 

I  came,  said  Jesus,  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil.  It  would 
seem  that  if  Jesus  were  the  reformer  he  is  sometimes  thought 
to  have  been,  if  his  method  and  secret  was  to  discard  all  that 
was,  and  to  begin  all  over  again,  there  never  was  a  better  time 
for  that  method.  Abuses  were  abundant,  and  shameless,  and 
21 


322  THE  VERY  ELECT 

defiant.  What  an  awful  story  of  human  corruption,  individual 
and  social,  is  set  forth  by  St.  Paul  in  his  epistle  to  the  Romans! 
If  we  did  not  know,  we  should  have  said  that  a  divinely 
commissioned  reformer  of  mankind  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius 
Caesar  would  have  made  short  work  of  every  institution  known 
to  men.  Preachers  often  tell  us  what  Jesus  would  do  if  he 
came  to  Chicago,  or  San  Francisco,  or  Paris,  and  they  always 
imply  that  he  would  not  leave  one  stone  upon  another  of  the 
moral,  social,  and  political  fabric.  He  would  overturn,  and 
overturn,  and  overturn,  till  society  was  like  the  debris  of  St. 
Andrew's  Cathedral.  But  we  know  that  whatever  he  would 
do,  this  he  certainly  would  not  do.  He  came  not  to  destroy 
but  to  fulfil.  He  came  to  seek  out  the  good  that  is  in  essential 
humanity,  the  humanity  which  was  his  own — and  which  he 
believed  in — to  seek  it  out,  to  discover  it  to  itself,  to  encourage 
it,  to  revivify  it,  to  fulfil  it,  till  by  infusing  his  own  divine 
energy  into  it,  he  should  enable  it  to  overcome,  overmaster, 
dominate  and  finally  expel  and  annul  the  evil  and  all  its  belong- 
ings and  accessories.  He  was  in  fact  so  patient  in  the  midst 
of  abuses  and  wrongs,  he  used  so  little  of  the  destructive  forces 
at  his  command,  that  men  of  the  reforming  temper  are  apt  to 
be  disappointed  with  a  certain  amiable  weakness  which  they 
think  they  discover  in  him.  So  slow  are  we  to  discern  power, 
except  when  power  asserts  its  presence  by  violence — not  seeing 
that  violence  is  a  manifestation  of  weakness  and  not  of  strength 
— of  force  which  soon  spends  itself  and  lapses — in  contrast 
with  the  calm,  sustained,  continuous  potency  which  has  time 
and  eternity  at  its  command. 

The  history  of  mankind  seems  to  show  that,  from  time  to 
time,  under  the  workings  of  evolution,  or,  which  is  the  same 
thing,  under  the  leadings  of  divine  Providence,  great  social 
changes  are  due  and  must  come.  When  the  time  is  ripe  for 
any  such  change,  the  great  question  is,  whether  it  shall  come 
normally,  by  a  process  of  fulfilment,  or  abnormally  by  a 
process  of  destruction  and  restoration.  Is  social  progress 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL        323 

necessarily  violent  and  wasteful?  Is  it  necessary  to  destroy 
a  magnificent  cathedral  with  all  its  embodied  history,  and  its 
aids  to  true  worship,  in  order  to  utter  a  protest  against  some 
abuse  which  a  more  patient  zeal  might  correct? 

May  it  not  be  well  for  us  at  a  time  when  we  seem  to  be 
threatened  with  social  changes  more  or  less  revolutionary, 
when  the  most  popular  measures  are  the  most  startling,  when 
men  are  outbidding  each  other  for  popular  favor  by  out- 
clamoring  each  other  for  changes  which  upset  and  disintegrate 
long  established  principles  and  institutions,  may  it  not  be 
worth  while  to  cool  and  quiet  our  minds  by  looking  for  a  little 
into  the  other  method — the  method  which  aims  to  accomplish 
its  work  not  by  destroying  but  by  fulfilling — the  method  in 
accordance  with  which 

I.  In  the  first  place,  we  seek  motive  and  inspiration  rather 
from  the  possible  good  which  is  before  us  than  from  the  evil 
which  is  behind  us.  Anger  against  wrong  does  not  furnish 
so  good  a  motive  as  enthusiasm  for  the  right.  Indignation 
may  be  a  sharp  stimulus,  but  it  is  not  a  sure  guide.  It  is  safer 
to  steer  by  a  star  in  front  than  by  a  smoke  in  the  rear.  What 
the  world  is  always  wanting,  certainly  always  needing,  is  more 
appreciation,  more  admiration,  more  inspiration.  There  is  a 
place  in  the  world  of  ideas,  and  in  the  social  world,  for  the 
satirist,  but  to  have  too  much  of  him,  or  too  many  of  him,  is  to 
get  distorted  and  morbid  views  of  things.  I  could  name  a 
widely  read  newspaper  on  which  to  be  a  constant  proof-reader 
would  endanger  not  only  good  temper,  but  sanity.  More  if 
possible  than  even  a  poet,  a  reformer  needs  imagination — a 
sane  and  wide-viewing  imagination.  True  reformers  are 
poets,  or  as  we  call  them  Utopians,  men  who  have  visions  of 
what  is  desirable,  and  can  make  it  desired  and  persuade  men 
that  it  is  feasible.  How  to  preserve  St.  Andrew's  Cathedral 
from  desecration  and,  by  well-ordered  and  magnificent  wor- 
ship, make  it  tributary  to  the  greater  glory  of  God  and  the 
elevation  of  man's  heart  and  life — what  a  triumph  had  that 


324  THE  VERY  ELECT 

been  for  a  Scottish  reformer !  How  to  make  the  human  tem- 
ple more  glorious  without  and  within — how  to  build  together 
the  varieties  of  human  abilities  and  aptitudes  into  an  organism 
which  would  at  once  perfect  the  parts  and  complete  the  whole 
— how  to  utilize  the  immense  wealth-producing  power  of  our 
civilization  so  as  to  make  it  an  accumulation  of  energies  wait- 
ing and  willing  to  be  sublimated  and  spiritualized,  how  much 
better  than  the  repressive  and  vindictive  measures  which 
destroy  and  do  not  fulfil!  Waste  is  not  merely  the  wanton 
destruction  of  values  which  exist;  it  is  also,  and  more  effectually, 
the  prevention  of  values  which  might  be.  To  induce  in 
society  a  general  feeling  of  timidity,  of  apprehension,  a  dread 
of  what  may  come  next,  is  as  bad,  it  may  be  a  thousand  times 
worse,  than  actual  destruction  by  fire,  or  flood,  or  earthquake. 
To  paralyze  the  agencies  which  make  for  good  is  the  most  fatal 
and  widespread  destruction.  Hope  and  not  terror,  good 
promised  rather  than  evil  doomed,  a  fair  prospect  rather  than 
an  escaped  gloom,  these  are  what  quicken  the  pulse  and  warm 
the  heart  and  give  the  zest  and  inspiration  which  make  progress 
at  once  safe  and  continuous  and  permanent. 

II.  The  movements,  secondly,  which  fulfil  without  needless 
destruction,  are  characterized  by  a  fine  and  comprehensive 
sense  of  justice.  A  fine  sense  of  justice,  I  say,  because  an 
ordinary,  rough  and  ready,  well-meaning  but  unintelligent 
sense  of  justice  in  these  difficult  and  complex  matters,  may 
work  more  wrong  than  that  which  it  sets  about  remedying. 
A  police  justice  in  a  great  city  will  decide  a  dozen  or  a  score  of 
cases  in  an  hour,  and  decide  them  with  an  average  degree  of 
fairness,  by  applying  first  one  and  then  the  other  of  the  two 
polar  maxims — to  "assume  innocence  till  guilt  is  proved/'  and 
to  "let  no  guilty  man  escape."  But  in  great  social  affairs  this 
extempore  justicing  will  not  do.  It  is  too  rude,  too  impulsive, 
too  temperamental  to  be  entrusted  with  the  decision  of  ques- 
tions involving  great  and  high  and  far  reaching  interests  of 
communities  and  nations.  The  justice  which  alone  meets  the 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL        325 

needs  of  problems  such  as  arise  in  our  time  and  people,  is  a 
justice  which  is  comparable  to  the  scales  in  a  chemical  labora- 
tory, which  weigh  the  thousandth  part  of  a  gramme — a  fine, 
discerning  justice — not  subtle,  not  losing  itself  in  fractional 
distinctions,  but  always  sensitive,  always  clear-eyed,  always 
true  to  the  shekel  of  the  sanctuary.  But  it  is  equally  important 
that  the  sense  of  justice  be  comprehensive — that  it  take  into 
its  view  all  the  interests  involved  in  the  question  before  it. 
A  spirit  of  right-doing,  or  right-judging,  if  it  is  narrow  and 
one-sided,  is  liable  to  issue  in  gross  wrong  and  incalculable 
mischief,  and  all  the  more  so  in  proportion  as  it  is  honest  and 
intense.  When  a  surgeon  sets  about  excising  an  ulcer  he  takes 
into  account  all  the  rest  of  the  body  and  sees  to  it,  so  far  as  he 
can,  that  the  healthy  part  does  not  suffer  from  the  operation. 
I  suppose  it  will  be  conceded  that  nine-tenths  of  all  the  business 
done  in  the  United  States  is  honest  business,  including  therein 
the  work  of  the  professions,  in  law,  medicine,  divinity  and 
literature.  If  this  is  so,  surely  it  is  bad  policy  and  bad  morals 
to  do  justice  upon  the  one-tenth  peccant  part  so  as  to  punish 
most  severely  the  nine-tenths  honest  and  honorable  business. 
The  justice  which  punishes,  which  destroys,  is  of  course 
necessary,  but  it  overvalues  itself — is  overvalued — in  compari- 
son with  the  justice  which  protects,  defends,  relieves,  or 
indemnifies.  Ordinary  human  nature  does  not  enjoy  a  white 
assize:  it  wants  to  see  punishments  inflicted:  that  is  its  test  of 
the  court's  efficiency.  In  the  parlance  of  old  New  England 
to  justify  a  man  was  to  punish  him.  In  our  time  we  want  at 
least  one  corporation  indicted  and  one  condemned  every  day — 
and  it  seems  to  make  no  matter  if  all  the  innocent  ones  are 
punished  also.  There  is  abroad  a  kind  of  Herodian  vengeance 
against  all  industrial  agencies.  As  the  surest  way  in  King 
Herod's  mind  for  getting  rid  of  one  dangerous  child  was  to  kill 
all  the  children, — so  in  order  to  punish  a  few  corrupt  corpora- 
tions, let  us  strangle  all  corporate  enterprises.  In  order  to 
punish  the  modicum  of  ill-gotten  and  ill-used  wealth,  let  us 


326  THE  VERY  ELECT 

minimize  all  wealth-producing  agencies.  There  is  no  justice  so 
essentially  unjust,  as  an  indiscriminating  justice,  a  justice 
which  with  eyes  bandaged  smites,  and  sees  not  and  cares  not 
what  it  smites.  In  saying  this  I  am  not  disparaging  our  courts 
of  justice — they  in  my  judgment  are  our  last  refuge  from  the 
ambition  of  executives  and  the  precipitancy  of  legislatures, 
from  the  tyranny  of  mobs,  and  organizations.  I  am  speaking 
of  the  justice — or  the  injustice — which  finds  expression  in 
popular  verdicts,  extra-judicial  judgments,  incendiary  har- 
angues, and  all  that  mass  of  pronouncements  on  public  affairs 
which,  like  the  cry  of  "On  to  Richmond,"  are  pushing  the  pub- 
lic officials  into  attitudes  which  are  bordering  on  frenzy,  and 
which  threaten  to  demolish  and  destroy  some  of  the  costly 
fabrics  of  our  civilization. 

III.  And,  again,  the  progress  which  moves  on  with  the 
least  possible  destruction  is  actuated  by  good  will  and  not  by 
ill  will,  by  love  and  not  by  hate.  One  of  the  characteristics  of 
Charity  as  described  by  St.  Paul  is  that  it  rejoices  not  in 
iniquity  but  rejoices  in  the  truth.  It  does  not  gloat  over  the 
discovery  of  foulness  and  wrong  and  evil,  but  delights  in  finding 
what  is  fair  and  wholesome  and  good.  There  is  a  psychologic 
truth  of  large  meaning  involved  in  the  phrase  "the  will  to 
believe."  The  real  inwardness  of  character  is  more  revealed 
by  what  it  wills  to  believe,  than  by  what  it  expressly  believes. 
Indeed  a  man  really  believes  only  what  he  wills  to  believe. 
Note  the  way  in  which  the  same  fact  coming  with  the  same 
evidence  is  received  by  different  men.  Is  it  some  crime  or 
scandal?  One  man  is  loath  to  believe  it — cannot  believe  it — 
will  not  believe  it — does  not  believe  it:  another  is  eager  to 
believe  it — and  believes  it.  Is  it  some  surprisingly  great  and 
good  action?  "Incredible,"  says  one  man.  "There  is  some 
sinister — some  depreciating  fact  or  motive  hidden  somewhere." 
The  man  of  another  mind  says  exultingly,  "It  is  just  the  fine 
and  noble  act  which  I  expected  from  such  a  man!"  Charity 
rejoices  not  in  iniquity — hopeth  and  believeth  all  good  things. 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL         327 

That  was  a  beautiful  word  indicative  of  a  beautiful  spirit  which 
the  Greek  poet  put  into  the  mouth  of  Antigone,  "My  nature 
is  to  love  with  those  who  love,  not  to  hate  with  those  who 
hate."  In  this  avowal  the  Greek  virgin  anticipated  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  himself:  "I  came  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil."  His 
was  not  the  spirit  which  suspects  and  gets  its  greatest  pleas- 
ure in  seeking  out  evil,  and  destroying  it  even  when  this  needs 
to  be  done.  To  hunt  out  the  evil  in  human  life,  in  human 
institutions,  to  destroy  it,  to  excise  it,  to  topple  it  down — that 
may  be  a  good  work  or  it  may  not  be.  It  may  be  well  to  let 
the  tares  grow  with  the  wheat;  to  trust  to  inward  forces  of 
vitality  to  expel  the  imposthume;  to  let  the  sculptured  saint 
remain  to  teach  us  a  real  kind  of  sacred  history;  to  purify 
corporate  industry  rather  than  to  throttle  it;  to  moralize 
wealth  rather  than  to  prevent  it.  But  surely,  to  find  the 
good  anywhere  and  everywhere,  to  encourage  it  into  vigor  and 
mastery,  to  find  the  nucleus  and  norm  of  an  institution  and 
nourish  its  true  interest  and  spirit,  to  clear  away  from  it  the 
evil  that  stifles  it,  and  do  any  destroying  that  may  be  called 
for  carefully  and  patiently,  but  to  get  the  chief  satisfaction 
and  joy  in  seeing  and  helping  the  good  to  grow  and  bud  and 
blossom  and  bear  fruit, — that  is  the  spirit  of  Jesus  and  the 
spirit  of  all  good  and  lasting  work  in  and  for  mankind.  Let 
who  will  glory  in  destruction,  and  waste,  in  the  discomfiture  of 
craft  and  graft:  we  will  rejoice  rather  when  truth  is  discovered 
and  will  join  in  its  eureka:  we  will  applaud  when  good  men 
come  to  the  front  and  the  high  places  are  filled  with  men  of 
unpurchasable  virtue;  when  health  and  manly  vigor  and 
womanly  beauty  are  becoming  the  prevailing  marks  of  our 
race;  when  the  competent  are  becoming  rich  and  the  poor  are 
becoming  competent  and  only  the  paupers  are  poor;  when  we 
see  more  and  more  the  spirit  of  universal  peace  prevailing  over 
the  spirit  of  dissension  and  war;  when  amid  all  the  glamours  of 
a  luxurious  civilization,  and  all  the  falsehoods  and  shams 
which  would  here  and  now,  if  ever  in  history,  justify  icono- 


328  THE  VERY  ELECT 

clasm,  our  people,  the  people  of  this  United  States,  of  all 
sections  and  creeds,  still  give  their  hearts'  admiration  and  love 
to  the  things  that  are  lovely  and  pure  and  of  good  report. 

In  all  this  there  is  one  fundamental  question  to  settle:  Is 
our  civilization  essentially  a  Christian  civilization — not  in 
all  its  details,  that  we  know  it  is  not — but  essentially?  Chris- 
tianity has  been  a  social  force  for  nearly  two  thousand  years. 
Are  the  foundations  rightly  laid?  Or  must  we  destroy  the 
whole  fabric,  and  lay  other  foundations,  and  call  in  Fourier 
and  Proudhon,  and  Tolstoi  and  Karl  Marx  and  Lassalle,  to 
lay  better  foundations  for  a  new  social  order?  Not  if  we 
believe  that  human  evolution  and  divine  Providence  are  one 
and  the  same,  working  along  the  same  lines  to  the  same  end, 
different  names  for  the  same  agency.  We  have  already 
enough  history  of  Christian  civilization  to  make  prophecy 
easy.  The  task  before  the  great  Christian  nations  is  not  to 
destroy  but  to  fulfil;  to  destroy  only  the  dead  and  decaying 
branches  in  order  that  the  trees  may  have  fuller  opportunity 
of  growth;  to  topple  down  and  replace  the  age-worn  and 
crumbling  buttresses,  and  dislodge  the  hideous  gargoyles  and 
leering  demons,  and  not  disturb  the  praying  apostle  and  the 
sleeping  saint:  to  make  not  suspicion,  jealousy,  envy,  hate, 
the  principle  and  motive  forces  of  social,  economic  and  politi- 
cal life,  but  religion,  the  spirit  of  Christ,  law,  freedom,  brother- 
hood, love — the  righteousness  that  exalteth  a  nation,  and 
cannot  endure  but  must  punish  and  destroy,  all  iniquity, 
whatsoever  loveth  and  maketh  a  lie, — yes,  but  controlling 
and  animating,  restoring  and  empowering  all,  the  justice 
which  strikes  when  it  must,  but  would  rather  spare  than  smite, 
and  the  charity  which  suffereth  long  and  is  kind,  thinketh  no 
evil,  rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity  but  in  the  truth,  believeth, 
endureth,  hopeth  all  things. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

There  is  never  a  more  hopeful  time,  and  never  a  more 
dangerous  time,  than  when  the  people  take  in  hand  seriously 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL         329 

the  vital  questions  which  concern  the  body  social  and  the 
body  politic.  And  such  a  time  is  this  time.  The  time  is 
hopeful  because  amid  profound  and  widespread  restlessness, 
both  the  mind  and  the  heart  of  the  people  are  believed  to  be 
sound — without  any  bias  toward  wrong  thinking  or  wrong 
doing  in  any  direction.  It  is  a  dangerous  time,  because  the 
questions  before  us  are  so  far  reaching  that  serious  mistakes 
would  entail  a  long  and  formidable  train  of  evils  upon  our 
own  and  succeeding  generations.  The  problems  are  funda- 
mental, and  the  results  for  good  or  evil  will  depend  on  whether 
the  issues  are  met  fundamentally  or  superficially.  The  debate 
is  not  between  conservatism  and  radicalism — both  principles 
will  be  in  demand  and  both  will  enter  into  the  settlement — it 
is  rather  between  destroying  and  fulfilling,  between  methods 
of  getting  rid  of  evil  and  installing  and  maintaining  the  good. 
The  present  danger  is  that  the  people,  because  of  certain 
flagrant  wrongs,  will  punish  themselves  vindictively,  and  will 
make  this  retributive  and  punitive  mood  permanent  in  laws 
and  institutions.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing  for  an  individual 
to  be  so  awed  and  cowed  by  some  unusual  revelation  of  evil 
as  to  go  bowed  and  humbled  all  his  days,  his  nerve  lost,  his 
faith,  hope  and  charity  irrevocably  gone.  From  such  a 
danger,  understood  and  foreseen,  the  brave  man  will  rouse 
himself,  and  like  the  patriarch  Job  will  stand  up  and  assert  his 
own  integrity  and  that  of  the  system  of  things.  Society  in 
our  country  is  just  now  facing  this  danger.  It  is  to  guard  you 
against  it  that  I  have  spoken  as  I  have  today.  You  have 
come  to  full  manhood  and  womanhood  in  a  time  of  general 
condemnation.  There  are  many  who  tell  you  that  business 
is  fraudulent — that  politics  are  corrupt — that  wealth  js  ill- 
gotten  and  ill-spent — that  social  life  is  demoralized — that  the 
besom  of  destruction  must  go  through  our  whole  social  order 
before  we  can  begin  to  be  in  right  relations  one  with  another. 
I  warn  you  against  coming  under  the  spell  of  this  spirit  of 
ill-will,  of  suspicion,  of  depression.  I  would  rally  you  to  the 


330  THE  VERY  ELECT 

ranks  of  the  reformers — for  our  age  certainly  needs  reforms — 
but  of  those  who  would  reform  by  fulfilment  rather  than  by 
destruction.  In  every  profession  and  calling  there  are  new 
truths  waiting  to  be  discovered,  new  methods  to  be  put  in 
operation,  old  truths  and  methods  not  yet  half  realized.  There 
is  unbounded  wealth  before  you  which  may  be  as  honestly 
got  and  as  rightly  spent,  as  were  the  meagre  returns  of  labor 
in  former  times.  For  a  while  doubtless  the  good  people  of 
San  Francisco  must  give  their  main  energies  to  the  extermina- 
tion of  plunderers.  But  the  reason  why  one  should  want  to 
live  in  San  Francisco  is  not  to  police  it,  but  to  build  up  a 
transcendently  beautiful  city.  Nature  in  her  wild  and  way- 
ward mood  came  to  destroy — it  will  be  the  glory  of  man  to 
fulfil.  In  this  respect  San  Francisco  is  a  type  of  the  whole 
world  of  civilized  mankind.  St.  Andrew's  Cathedral  will  never 
be  rebuilt — San  Francisco  will  be.  It  is  more  glorious  to 
build  than  to  destroy. 

But  I  must  not  dismiss  you  in  this  our  last  meeting  together, 
without  saying  a  few  words  which  will  be  less  individual, 
more  what  the  entire  body  of  your  instructors  would  wish  me 
to  say  for  them.  The  sum  of  it  would  be  that  they  have  put 
their  best  of  toil  and  love  into  you,  into  your  minds  and 
characters,  in  the  confident  hope  that  in  so  doing  they  have 
done  a  good  work  not  for  you  only,  but  for  ends  higher  than 
those  which  affect  either  you  or  themselves — work  which  will 
make  for  the  health  of  many  communities;  for  the  prosperity 
of  many  industries;  for  the  prevalence  of  justice  in  many 
districts  and  circuits;  for  good  instruction  in  many  schools;  for 
love  and  happiness  in  many  homes;  for  the  maintenance  of 
true  religion  in  many  churches.  The  rewards  of  this  our 
academic  life  are  not  in  money,  or  in  what  money  will  buy, 
but  in  what  you  and  such  as  you  are,  as  compared  with  what 
you  were  when  you  came  into  our  hands — and  still  more  in 
what  you  will  be  and  will  do  hereafter.  When  one  of  you 
shall  hereafter  do  a  fine  thing  in  your  calling  or  in  your  life — 


NOT  TO  DESTROY  BUT  TO  FULFIL        331 

even  though  it  be  not  so  great  a  thing — if  it  is  a  fine  thing, 
something  worthy  of  a  scholar,  and  a  gentleman  or  a  gentle- 
woman and  a  Christian,  it  ought  to  add  to  your  own  joy  to 
think  that  it  will  bring  special  delight  to  some  one  o£  your  old 
professors:  and  he,  on  his  part,  will  get  one  of  the  supreme  joys 
of  his  life  in  thinking  (perhaps  he  cannot  in  his  exultation  keep 
from  saying)  "I  taught  him,  or  her,  to  do  that!"  And  so 
God  be  with  you  in  your  callings,  your  public  services,  your 
struggles,  your  triumphs,  your  homes,  your  whole  lives,  till 
you  come  back  to  tell  of  them  to  each  other,  and  to  us,  in  the 
many,  many  happy  and  fruitful  years  to  come  which  we  hope 
and  pray  may  be  yours. 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE 

"O,  that  I  had  wings  like  a  dove;  then  would  I  fly  away  and  be  at  rest." 

Psalm  lv:  6. 

THE  cry — I  had  almost  said  the  fad — of  the  hour,  is  the  Sim- 
ple Life.  The  phrase  has  a  glance  in  different  directions.  It  is 
a  protest,  we  may  say  a  satire,  levelled  against  certain  prev- 
alent forms  of  social  life.  As  such  it  recalls  with  ominous 
suggestiveness  other  protests  and  other  satires, — how  Tacitus 
depicted  the  simple  life  of  the  Germans  in  order  to  throw  into 
strong  contrast  the  corruption  of  Roman  society — how 
Rousseau  idealized  the  noble  savage  against  a  background  of 
French  decadence — how  "the  Austrian"  and  her  dames  would 
fain  have  taken  out  the  taste  of  the  spiced  wines  of  Versailles 
with  the  fresh  milk  of  the  Hermitage.  As  a  reaction  from 
extravagance,  and  artificiality,  and  sybaritism,  the  cry  for 
the  simple  life  is  an  expression  of  that  sanity  in  the  social  body 
which  instinctively  loathes  and  throws  off  whatever  is  stale 
and  putrescent.  On  another  side  this  familiar  strain  is  but  an 
echo  of  the  world-old  cry  for  a  refuge  from  the  weariness  of 
life;  the  old  wail  of  fatigue;  the  old  sigh  for  a  place  where  the 
wicked  cease  from  troubling,  for  Nirvana,  and  Nepenthe,  and 
the  asphodel  meadows.  It  is  the  lyric  of  disappointment,  and 
disillusion,  and  of  the  tired  evening  of  life.  In  all  these  mean- 
ings of  it  there  is  nothing  new  to  our  times,  and  nothing 
specially  significant  or  alarming.  The  world  has  always  had, 
and  probably  always  will  have,  its  nights  of  riot  and  revelry, 
followed  by  days  of  repentance,  and  lassitude,  and  self-con- 
demnation, out  of  which  comes  a  virtue  too  severe  to  be  lasting. 
But  when,  as  in  our  time,  what  is  called  the  simple  life  is 
deliberately  set  up  as  the  ideal  human  life  to  which  individual 
and  social  standards  should  conform,  it  is  pertinent  to  challenge 

332 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  333 

the  specious  phrase  and  to  inquire  what  of  truth  and  what 
possibly  of  error  it  involves. 

We  note  in  the  first  place  that  the  true  human  life  is  essen- 
tially and  inevitably  complex,  and  that  any  simplicity  which  it 
may  legitimately  have  must  be  consistent  with  this  essential 
complexity.  Life  is  essentially  complex.  It  is  richly  endowed 
with  possibilities  which,  to  an  extent  unknown  and  undreamed 
of  in  earlier  and  especially  prechristian  times,  have  become 
great  and  wonderful  actualities.  He  who  for  us  readers  of 
English — and  not  for  us  only — has  sounded  its  depths  and 
shoals,  can  express  himself  best  by  an  exclamation:  "What  a 
piece  of  work  is  a  man! "  And  one  of  those  inspired  to  express, 
for  all  time,  the  best  thoughts  of  the  best  souls,  has  said,  also 
with  exclamation:  "Thou  madest  him  a  little  lower  than  the 
gods!"  Life  is  somewhat  less  than  life — it  is  at  best  primitive 
and  rudimentary  life,  unless  it  calls  out,  and  employs,  and 
gratifies  all  the  human  capabilities,  all  the  natural  appetites, 
affections,  powers,  of  the  being  who  in  his  potentialities  at 
least  is  but  little  lower  than  divine. 

To  simplify  human  life  by  foregoing  its  higher  reaches, — to 
be  content  with  what  comes  easily  and  can  be  lost  without 
much  regret — not  to  try  very  hard — nil  admirari — this  is  to 
live  not  a  human  life  but  a  sub-human  life.  The  hermit  to 
avoid  gluttony  reduces  nourishment  to  roots  and  water  with 
a  result  which  is  not  temperance  but  a  bloodless  existence. 
In  a  fit  of  morose  virtue  we  cut  off  art  and  music,  and  sports, 
and  laughter  and  all  the  embellishments  of  life,  and  think  to 
make  life  truer  by  making  it  narrow,  and  meager,  and  dull — in 
other  words  less  vital.  It  is  a  pleasant  vacation  relief  to  wear 
homespun  and  go  barefoot,  but  for  a  permanency,  it  would 
be  simply  a  renunciation  of  the  good  things  which  the  new 
times  have  brought  to  us. 

And  not  only  is  life  essentially  complex,  it  is  ever  growing 
more  and  more  complex.  Whether  or  not  we  are  expanding 
into  a  fourth  dimension  of  space,  we  are  developing  new  facul- 


334  THE  VERY  ELECT 

ties,  acquiring  new  sensibilities,  utilizing  new  powers,  accumu- 
lating new  knowledges,  are  relating  ourselves  to  a  new  universe 
by  ever  increasing  lines  of  contact  and  influence. 

And  with  all  this  increasing  complexity  of  life  comes  its 
perpetual  enrichment.  In  every  century  humanity  becomes 
a  nobler  inheritance  to  be  born  into.  Every  successive 
generation  of  children  comes  into  a  patrimony  of  more  truth 
knowable,  more  power  available,  greater  wonders  to  study, 
nobler  characters  to  admire,  truer  souls  to  love. 

But  along  with  the  inevitable  and  increasing  complexity  of 
life  comes  the  heavier  responsibility  of  life,  the  greater  capacity 
for,  and  the  greater  liability  to  mistake,  and  pain,  and  suffer- 
ing. He  that  increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow  as  well. 
A  sensitiveness  to  the  higher  enjoyment  of  life  involves  also 
sensitiveness  to  its  deeper  sorrows.  We  may  imagine  a 
candidate  for  human  existence  confronted  with  an  exhibition 
of  its  possible  good  and  evil,  and  given  his  choice  for  or  against. 
"These  are  the  possibilities  of  an  earthly  life — large,  rich, 
expansive  beyond  comprehension — its  liabilities  to  mistake, 
and  trouble,  and  failure  equally  great,  possibly  greater.  Will 
you  take  the  risk  of  the  one  for  the  possibility  of  the  other? 
Or  rather,  in  addition  to  a  very  certain  amount  of  discomfort 
and  suffering,  how  much  possible  and  probable  pain  will  you 
venture  upon,  in  order  to  realize  the  manifoldness  of  human 
life  in  its  nobler  possibilities?"  We  cannot  imagine  any  other 
decision  than  that  we  are  all  virtually  making  when  we  trust 
the  whole  matter  to  the  will  of  God,  which,  when  all  is  said  and 
done,  is  what  we  mean  by  Faith,  a  belief  that  in  the  matter  of 
our  human  life  God  is  good  and  loving,  and  that  in  compelling 
us  to  accept  life,  whether  we  will  or  no,  he  thereby  guarantees 
to  us  the  balance  of  good,  actual  or  potential.  But  in  the  prac- 
tical answering  of  this  question  men  divide  themselves  into 
two  classes — first,  those  whom  we  will  call  the  refusers,  those 
who  shrink  from  the  responsibility  of  too  much  life.  Let  us  be 
just  and  not  put  into  this  class  those  who  have  honestly  and 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  335 

faithfully  taken  account  of  themselves,  of  their  powers  of 
achievement  and  endurance,  and  have  quietly  and  modestly  left 
the  great  field  of  life  to  the  more  ambitious,  and  have  retired 
into  a  shady  nook  where  they  ask  nothing  better  of  life  than 
that  its  monotony  be  undisturbed  and  its  simplicity  be  pre- 
served from  fear  and  apprehension.  Not  all  souls  are  planning 
for  the  simple  life — some  already  have  it — the  great  majority 
of  the  human  race  perhaps.  They  till  a  few  paternal  acres, 
pursue  some  handicraft,  live  quietly  within  the  little  round 
of  activities  which  cluster  about  home,  and  school,  and  parish, 
and  village  politics,  and  by  sheer  quietude,  not  to  say  immo- 
bility, keep  the  rest  of  the  world  from  going  far  out  of  the  safe 
and  wise  beaten  track.  Of  these  we  will  not  say  anything 
more  scornful  than  that  the  human  race  was  not  created  for 
them  as  a  finality.  But  the  question  concerns  those,  few  or 
many,  who  in  our  time  are  preaching  and  practicing  the  simple 
life  because  they  will  not  respond  to  the  calls  of  the  larger  and 
truer  life.  Dante  has  eternalized  one  who  committed  the 
great  refusal.  They  commit  the  great  refusal  who  are  so  dis- 
mayed by  the  necessary  struggles,  and  possible  perils,  of  the 
full  human  life  that  they  flee  away,  or  in  plain  prose  run 
away,  and  hide  themselves  from  life  itself,  into  some  of  the 
negative  places  which  life  least  invades — into  retreats  and 
hermitages,  into  social  individualism,  and  political  independ- 
ence, and  religious  indifferentism,  and,  in  general  into  irrespon- 
sible and  non-committal  positions  and  attitudes.  If  there  is 
misery  in  the  world,  these  avoid  the  pain  of  it  by  passing  by 
on  the  other  side  and  not  seeing  it.  If  there  is  high-handed 
wrong  which  calls  for  valiant  redress,  they  are  so  much  im- 
pressed with  what  can  be  said  on  the  other  side  that  they 
shrink  from  taking  a  stand.  If  there  is  hard  work  to  be  done, 
a  fire  to  be  put  out,  a  drowning  man  to  be  rescued,  a  nuisance 
to  be  abated,  a  campaign  to  be  fought,  they  are  sure  never  to 
be  there  or  thereabouts — they  are  somewhere  in  hiding,  pro- 
tecting their  sensibilities  from  rude  and  dangerous  shocks. 


336  THE  VERY  ELECT 

But  the  whole  scheme  of  things  under  Divine  Providence 
works  against  those  who  would  seek  the  simple  life  by  the 
process  of  isolation,  and  voluntary  insensibility,  and  artificial 
abridgment  of  life.  If  a  man  will  not  have  care,  if  he  ride  off 
into  the  desert  to  escape  care,  then,  in  Horace's  figure,  Care, 
black  Care,  mounts  behind  him  and  rides  with  him.  "Keep 
far  off,  ye  profane,"  says  the  dainty  epicure,  but  essential 
realities  will  not  keep  off  and  will  not  down  at  his  bidding. 
He  may  bar  the  doors  and  bolt  the  windows,  but  the  cry  of 
humanity  will  come  to  him  through  thickest  walls,  and  will 
not  let  him  sleep  in  his  solitude  and  seclusion.  So  long  as  he 
is  human  he  is  vulnerable,  open  to  assault  in  spite  of  all  the 
palisades  by  which  he  has  secured  his  serenity  and  repose. 
Any  trivial  incident,  as  our  great  optimist  poet  has  said,  the 
odor  of  a  flower,  a  line  of  poetry,  a  knock  at  the  door,  a  peep 
from  the  window,  a  call  from  the  postman,  may  bring  in  the 
eternal  human  to  spoil  the  whole  flimsy  and  false  pretense  of 
seclusion  and  peace. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  which  comes  out  of  the  storm 
and  stress  of  human  existence  is  then  not  the  simple  life  in  the 
sense  of  the  life  of  refusal  and  refuge  and  peace.  No  doubt 
the  temptation  is  often  great  to  adopt  it — for  the  strain  of 
the  larger  life  is  severe,  sometimes  terrible,  and  the  flesh  cries 
out  with  the  psalmist  for  relief.  But  the  human  heart  is  too 
large  to  accept  mere  relief  as  the  final  solution  of  its  troubles: 
it  is  too  brave  to  give  up  the  conflict  with  necessary  difficulties. 
This  cry  of  the  poet  for  the  flight  and  repose  of  the  dove,  as 
we  saw,  is  the  sigh  of  fatigue  and  of  the  evening.  When  the 
morning  comes  with  its  new  strength,  the  wail  of  languor  is 
repudiated.  The  heart  finds  in  its  psalms  of  life  a  new  strain, 
even  this:  "They  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their 
strength;  they  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles;  they  shall 
run  and  not  be  weary;  they  shall  walk  and  not  faint."  We 
long  not  for  the  wings  of  the  dove  that  we  may  fly  away  and  be 
at  rest,  but  for  the  wings  of  the  eagle  that  we  may  mount  and 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  337 

soar:  we  would  have  the  elevation  that  is  better  than  repose, 
and  the  strength  that  is  better  than  relief. 

I.  That  will  mean  for  one  thing  that  we  will  be  rid  of  the 
fever  of  life.  It  is  not  the  complexity  of  life,  not  its  fulness, 
its  manifoldness,  that  fatigues,  it  is  the  fever  of  it.  That  which 
really  fascinates  in  the  contemplation  of  the  so-called  simple 
life  is  its  coolness,  its  calm.  The  habitat  of  the  longed-for  life 
is  "the  cool,  sequestered  vale."  The  real  grievance  in  many 
dissatisfied  lives  is  that  they  are  too  intense,  too  passionate. 
The  dogma  of  this  kind  of  life  is  that  one  must  ever  and 
always  "  do  things,"  and  that  it  is  better  to  do  wrong  than  to  do 
nothing.  Pascal's  famous  saying  that  "half  the  calamities  of 
the  world  come  about  because  men  are  not  willing  sometimes  to 
sit  still  in  a  room,"  would  do  for  a  Port-Royalist,  but  if  acted 
on  by  an  American  in  the  twentieth  century  would  mark  him 
as  a  reactionary.  The  ideal  set  before  our  generation  is  to  be 
strenuous  in  season  and  out  of  season.  But  unmitigated 
strenuosity  leads  to  what  physiologists  call  the  hysteric  passion, 
and  to  the  breakdown  for  which  the  simple  life  is  the  supposed 
remedy.  A  Friend  once  asked  Robert  Southey  how  he  spent 
the  day,  and  the  man  of  many  learnings  told  how  he  parceled 
out  all  the  hours  of  the  twenty-four.  "But  friend  Robert," 
she  asked,  "when  dost  thou  do  thy  thinking?"  A  man,  in  an 
age  which  does  more  acting  than  thinking,  which  puts  doing 
things  above  reflecting  how  to  do  things,  which  leaves  no  hour 
in  its  day  and  no  day  in  its  week,  for  calm,  brooding  thought, 
inevitably  comes  to  a  crisis  in  which  like  Tacitus  and  Rousseau 
and  Marie  Antoinette  it  calls  for  a  return  to  a  primitive  and 
savage  life,  whereas  what  it  really  wants  is  the  meek  and  quiet 
spirit,  the  willingness  to  enter  into  one's  closet  and  shut  the 
door,  and  pray  that,  not  the  passionate  will  of  the  time-spirit, 
but  God's  will,  may  be  done.  What  our  time  needs,  and  does 
not  know  that  it  needs,  is  a  saner  judgment,  a  dynamic  that 

like  other  modern  forces   is  more  effective  the  less  noise  it 
22 


338  THE  VERY  ELECT 

makes — a  spirit  which  is  serene  and  unshaken  because  of  its 
faith  in  the  things  that  cannot  be  moved. 

II.  Again,  we  counteract  the  tedium  of  life  by  dignifying 
in  our  minds  its  tasks.  It  is  of  some  consequence  to  make  the 
world  respect  us  for  tasks  well  performed,  but  it  is  vastly  more 
to  have  them  ennobled  in  our  own  minds.  If  it  is  any  part  of 
this  desire  for  the  simple  life  that  we  may  rid  ourselves  of  life's 
tasks  and  burdens,  the  desire  is  in  so  far  an  ignoble  one,  because 
a  large  part  of  the  merit  and  the  reward  of  life  consists  in 
conscientiously  performing  well  these  tasks  and  bearing 
bravely  these  burdens.  Life  without  difficulty,  the  easy- 
going life,  the  life  of  the  gods  of  Epicurus,  would  not  for  a 
being  capable  of  great  things  be  worth  living.  Life  is  never 
so  interesting,  the  present  is  never  so  satisfying,  and  the  future 
never  so  exhilarating,  the  repose  of  the  dove  never  so  little 
coveted,  the  eagle's  flight  never  so  envied,  as  when  we  are 
conscious  of  having  performed  a  hard  duty  creditably,  or 
when  we  feel  able  to  face  a  difficulty  or  a  danger  confidently. 
Then  life  seems  worth  living.  Then  we  feel  the  thrill  and  joy 
and  glory  of  life  in  its  fulness  and  power.  This  is  the  secret  of 
a  true  and  happy  life — to  dignify  life's  tasks,  to  conquer  them 
—to  surmount  them — to  rise  from  them — shall  I  say  with  the 
poet,  to  higher  things — yes,  to  higher  tasks — to  meet  and 
surmount  new  and  greater  difficulties  and  to  turn  all  tasks  and 
difficulties  into  triumphs.  Of  course  this  is  no  picture  of  life 
to  offer  to  the  feeble,  or  the  blase*,  or  those  who  have  the  senile 
temper  either  of  age  or  youth.  It  is  not  for  those  who  cherish 
the  facile,  or  the  gay,  or  the  frolic  view  of  life.  Let  these 
seek  the  simple  life — they  are  capable  of  nothing  better — the 
life  simple  in  its  shallowness,  its  emptiness,  its  worthlessness. 
But  to  those  who  are  capable  of  aspiring  and  acting,  the  secret 
of  perpetual  joy  in  life  comes,  and  abides,  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  power  to  overcome  which  is  gained  by  overcoming,  and 
which  is  never  satiated,  but  rather  ever  renewed  as  it  goes  on 
from  strength  to  strength  and  from  victory  to  victory. 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  339 

III.  We  come  finally  to  see  that  what  we  want  of  life  is  not 
on  the  one  hand  simplicity,  at  least  not  meagerness,  not  reduc- 
tion of  life  to  its  lowest  term;  not  to  make  a  solitude  of  life  and 
call  it  peace;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  not  life  under  high 
pressure,  "the  restless  will  that  moveth  to  and  fro,"  the  life 
that  frets  and  fumes  till  in  sheer  exhaustion  it  sighs  for  the 
wings  of  the  dove  that  it  may  fly  away  and  be  at  rest;  but  the 
unity  of  life — life  whole  and  complete  and  consistent,  whether  it 
be  large  or  small — a  unity  which  is  consistent  with  infinite 
differentiation,  which  integrates  each  whole  life  into  a  social 
whole  which  also  has  a  unity  and  completeness  of  its  own. 
The  humblest  life  has  no  need  to  fret  and  pine  and  tire  itself 
out  in  emulation  of  a  life  larger  than  itself,  if  only  it  is  true  to 
its  own  vocation  and  opportunity;  and  the  largest  and  most 
strenuous  life  need  not  make  its  own  stress  and  its  own  dimen- 
sions the  standard  of  all  other  lives. 

But  this  unity  of  life  for  which  I  am  pleading  is  just  now 
broken  in  upon  and  seriously  disturbed  by  two  conditions  of 
which  I  will  say  a  word.  One  is  the  disproportionate  and 
overweening  attention  absorbed  by  politics  in  the  totality  of 
life.  There  are  certain  great  segments,  great  zones  of  life, 
together  making  up  its  main  expanse,  one  of  which  is  politics. 
Its  absolute  importance  cannot  be  exaggerated,  its  relative 
importance  may  be  and  I  think  is,  in  our  country  and  our  day. 
Fifty  years  ago  Harriet  Martineau,  visiting  our  country,  com- 
mented unfavorably  on  the  same  tendency  among  our  people. 

If  you  see  three  men  or  a  dozen  talking  together  on  the 
street  corner  or  on  the  veranda  or  in  the  meeting-house  shed, 
you  know  it  is  politics  they  are  talking,  you  know  it  is  not 
sanitation,  or  education,  or  morality,  or  literature,  or  religion. 
The  consequence  is  that  men's  interest  in  life  becomes  one- 
sided, whole  zones  of  life  equally  important  are  neglected,  and 
thus  our  total  life  lacks  balance  and  symmetry  and  healthy 
interplay  of  functions,  and  so  becomes  an  easy  prey  to  dis- 
orders that  attack  the  distorted  and  unhealthy  body. 


340  THE  VERY  ELECT 

And  secondly,  under  modern  conditions  and  under  an 
influence  which  is  speciously  termed  "publicity" — which  is 
good  and  right  when  applied  to  things  properly  public — our 
social  life  is  in  danger  of  becoming  what  I  will  call  casuistical, 
by  which  I  mean  a  temper  and  habit  of  fretting  ourselves,  and 
twitting  one  another,  over  the  details  of  life,  holding  per- 
petual censorship  over  our  own  and  our  neighbor's  mode  of 
living,  and  in  so  doing  forfeiting  the  great  claims  and  offices 
and  joys  of  life  itself.  One  thing  that  makes  so  many  long 
for  the  wings  of  the  dove  that  they  may  fly  away  and  be  at 
rest  is  that  in  this  day  we  have  so  much  ill-will  sedulously 
propagated  in  our  communities — so  much  suspicion  of  our 
neighbors  disseminated — so  much  said  and  done  to  make 
Ishmaelites  of  us,  every  man's  hand  against  every  man.  We  are 
losing  the  joy  of  living  in  this  splendid  day  and  this  glorious 
generation  because  some  men's  happiness  is  dependent  on 
other  men's  undeserved  fret  and  worry  and  fatigue.  Oh, 
that  we  might  once  again  enter  into  the  joy  of  living  as  men 
once  lived,  even  the  joy  of  enduring  and  suffering  as  they  did, 
and  be  freed  from  this  life  of  mutual  bickering,  of  distrust,  and 
objurgation!  "Father,"  said  a  pragmatic  youth,  "reprove 
my  brother  for  his  indolence,  sleeping  as  he  is,  while  I  am 
thus  early  at  work."  "Better,  my  son,"  was  the  reply,  "that 
you  should  be  asleep  than  rise  early  to  revile  your  brother." 

What  is  it  then,  for  a  last  word,  that  we  are  blindly  and  yet 
really  seeking  under  the  guise  of  the  simple  life?  It  is  a  life 
of  peace  with  God  and  of  charity  toward  men.  The  former, 
peace  with  God,  we  can  have  as  really,  I  do  not  say  as  easily, 
in  a  large  life  as  in  a  meager  one,  and  the  larger  the  life  the 
deeper  may  that  peace  be.  Elijah  had  more  of  it  when  he  was 
fighting  the  priests  of  Baal,  than  when  he  was  sighing  and 
groaning  under  the  juniper  tree.  And  this  social  unrest,  this 
jealousy  and  antagonism  and  strife  of  classes  and  interests, 
this  wearisome  clash  of  claims  and  counter-claims,  which  fill 
the  air  with  din  and  hearts  with  suspicion  and  hate;  Oh,  that  we 
had,  not  wings  like  a  dove  that  we  might  fly  away  from  it  all 


THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  341 

and  be  at  rest,  but  the  spirit  of  the  dove,  the  spirit  of  God 
descending  like  a  dove  upon  us,  calming  our  fever,  cooling  OUT 
passion,  making  us  to  be  kindly  affectioned  one  to  another,  to 
be  peacemakers  and  therefore  children  of  God,  and  to  put  on 
above  all  things  charity  which  is  the  bond  of  perfectness. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Classes: 

If  I  were  preaching  in  a  hospital,  like  Ugo  Bassi,  or  if  I 
were  talking  to  veterans  in  a  Soldiers'  Home,  or  to  those  who  like 
Prometheus  on  his  rock  had  more  leisure  than  they  wanted,  I 
should  do  my  best  to  make  a  simple  life  seem  a  satisfactory  one. 
I  should  know  where  to  go  in  poetry  and  fiction  and  scripture 
for  the  true  idyllic  touch  and  charm.  It  is  always  fascinating 
to  imagine  one's  self  mooring  his  small  shallop  under  friendly 
stars  in  some  little  winding  creek  and  viewing  the  storm  ashore. 
But  as  I  am  speaking  to  those  in  the  heyday  of  youth  with  all 
the  possibilities  of  a  full  and  complete  life  before  them,  surely 
the  note  should  be  one  of  inspiration  and  urgency.  Of  two 
errors,  the  one  which  takes  life  too  easily,  and  the  other  which 
takes  it  too  hard,  I  have  tried  to  guard  you  against  both. 
The  main  lesson  of  the  hour  is  that  haste,  rush,  intensity,  pas- 
sion, in  the  estimates  and  choices  of  life,  are  weaknesses;  that 
calm,  deliberate,  continuous,  persistent,  soulful  energy, — that, 
only  that,  is  power.  If  we  are  to  believe  the  voices  most 
commonly  heard  in  our  time,  the  rushers  are  in  the  ascendant. 
The  current  preachment  is  against  "the  mad  rush  for  wealth." 
If  this  is  the  case,  it  is  not  to  us  in  the  quiet  retreat  of  college 
life  obvious.  I  should  have  said,  looking  over  the  field  as  we 
see  it,  that  the  refusers  are  in  the  majority — that  those  who 
are  shirking  and  shamming  work,  who  are  letting  the  sons  of 
strangers  come  in  and  take  all  the  best  prizes  and  get  all  the 
best  places,  and  the  many  who  are  making  life  too  much  a  bluff 
and  a  trick,  are  very  much  in  evidence.  But  be  sure  you  come 
into  neither  of  these  classes.  Take  hold  of  the  work  with  a 
purpose  of  continuity,  and  persistence,  and  unity.  You  may 
pardonably  long  for  the  wings  of  the  dove  when  the  tired  day 


342  THE  VERY  ELECT 

is  over,  when  the  campaign  has  been  fought  out,  when  the 
dragon  has  been  slain;  but  when  the  new  morning  comes, 
rise  again  on  the  wings  of  the  eagle  into  higher  soaring  and 
farther  visions. 

The  older  ones  among  us  are  growing  very  envious  of  you 
as  we  see  the  splendid  opportunities  of  life  opening  before  you. 
What  makes  us  and  the  angels  weep  is  to  see  you  aspiring  to 
anything  beneath  the  best,  your  best  at  least,  in  this  magnif- 
icent possibility.  One  of  the  phrasemakers  of  the  past  was 
thought  to  have  said  something  very  fine  when  he  heartened 
his  fellow  toilers  by  telling  them  they  would  have  all  eternity 
to  rest  in.  That  was  a  note  of  comfort  for  the  weary  and 
heavy  laden,  but  it  lacked  the  note  which  appeals  to  normal 
healthy  young  hearts.  An  eternity  of  rest,  no!  give  that  to 
weaklings.  An  eternal  joy  in  working,  that  were  better. 
Not  to  be  permitted  to  work — that  is  the  most  awful  punish- 
ment man  has  ever  devised,  the  punishment  of  the  convict 
in  solitary  confinement.  To  work  till  we  are  weary,  and  to 
get  renewal  for  work  by  rest — that  is  our  earthly  happiness. 
To  work  without  weariness,  perhaps  not  without  stress  and 
pain,  for  perhaps  that  is  essential  to  the  highest  joy  of  work, 
to  work  as  the  Father  worketh  hitherto,  and  as  Christ  works, 
happily,  zestfully,  and  without  satiety,  that  is  heaven. 

The  graduation  from  our  universities  and  colleges,  in  these 
June  weeks,  of  numbers  reaching  in  the  aggregate  to  the 
thousands,  is  an  event  of  great  meaning — possibly,  if  we  may 
be  so  bold  as  to  say  it — possibly  of  as  much  consequence  to  the 
country  as  the  much  noisier  events  taking  place  at  the  same 
time.  There  is  no  harm  whatever  in  your  carrying  away  with 
you  into  your  new  life  a  certain  amount  of  self -consciousness, 
I  will  even  say,  of  a  sense  of  self-importance.  You  are  the 
heroes  of  the  hour.  But  you  carry  also  a  heavy  responsibility 
which  will  inevitably  sober  you.  Come  back  to  us  in  ten  or 
fifteen  or  twenty  years,  with  hopes  turned  into  actualities, 
with  promises  ripened  into  fruitage.  We  will  welcome  you 
then,  we  give  you,  God  speed,  now. 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES 

For  my  brethren  and  companions'  sakes,  I  will  now  say,  Peace  be 
within  thee!  Psalm  cxxii:8. 

THESE  words  suggest  two  reflections  which  flow  into  each 
other;  first,  how  our  personal  affections  humanize  places  and 
events;  and  second,  how  these  personal  affections  furnish  the 
motives  to  what  we  think  and  do  and  are. 

For  my  brethren  and  companions'  sakes!  It  is  the  heart 
of  Israel  yearning  toward  Zion  which  here  utters  itself;  it 
is  the  universal  human  heart  voicing  its  interest  in  places 
and  events  because  of  the  human  personalities  associated  with 
them.  Jerusalem  was  the  geographical  and  political  capital 
of  the  Israelitish  people.  As  such  it  was  in  their  eyes  impos- 
ing and  august.  But  it  was  much  more;  it  was  the  seat  of 
Israel's  patriotism,  the  center  of  Israel's  religion.  Thither 
the  tribes  went  up;  there  they  held  high  feast;  present  to  their 
eyes  it  was  their  glory;  distant  from  them  ifc  filled  their  im- 
agination. One  of  their  poets  said  of  it : 

"Thy  saints  take  pleasure  in  her  stones, 
Her  very  dust  to  them  is  dear." 

From  these  poets  all  later  enthusiasts  have  borrowed 
phrases  wherewith  to  express  their  affection  for  sacred  places. 
Who  that  has  a  human  heart  in  him  does  not  know  the  spell 
which  sanctifies,  glorifies,  certain  spots  of  earth,  and  who,  if 
he  stops  to  think,  does  not  recognize  as  the  chief  element  in 
the  charm,  the  personal  touch  which  gives  it  color  and  dis- 
tinction? Scenery,  beautiful  or  grand,  has  attractions  in  and 
of  itself  for  every  eye  that  has  a  soul  behind  it.  Mountain, 
lake,  forest,  ocean;  the  Valclusa  fountain,  the  blue  Danube, 
Alpine  peak  and  glacier,  Niagara,  canyon,  geyser;  wonders 
and  glories  innumerable  fill  this  magnificent  earth  which  the 

343 


344  THE  VERY  ELECT 

Creator  has  given  to  the  children  of  men.  But  one  gleam  of 
humanity,  one  touch  of  human  nature,  outbids  them  all  in 
its  appeal  to  the  human  heart.  Once  on  a  time  while  a  throng 
were  gazing  enraptured  upon  the  gorgeous  scenery  of  the 
Yellowstone,  a  mother  eagle  was  spied  circling  around  her  nest 
on  a  pinnacled  crag,  bringing  to  her  young  food  snatched  from 
the  gorge  a  thousand  feet  below,  and  for  the  half  hour  during 
which  this  daring  feat  of  motherhood  was  being  accomplished, 
the  scenery  to  the  spectators  might  have  been  a  thousand 
miles  away.  When  the  train  stops  at  Niagara  ten  minutes 
to  give  passengers  a  sight  of  the  cataract,  three-fourths  of 
the  men  keep  on  reading  their  papers.  Is  it  conceivable 
that  there  would  be  any  such  apathy,  even  on  the  part  of 
habitual  travellers,  if  the  train  passed  in  front  of  Mount 
Vernon,  or  Gettysburg,  or  Arlington?  The  earth  has  in  all 
its  lands  spots  which  have  become  memorable  because  of  some 
human  incident,  some  tragedy,  some  heroism,  some  supremely 
interesting  event,  sad  or  joyous,  which  the  human  in  us  de- 
lights to  feel  over  again.  It  is  this  that -sends  people,  not  in 
other  respects  sympathetic  with  what  is  grand  and  deep  in 
life,  roaming  all  over  the  world,  that  they  may  get  into  touch 
with  the  spirit  and  sentiment  that  has  made  certain  places 
memorable.  Why  are  so  many  Americans  more  eager  to  see 
Europe  than  their  own  country?  It  is  because  their  own 
country,  new  as  yet,  scantily  stored  as  yet  with  historic  me- 
morials and  associations,  affords  them  comparatively  few  in- 
citements to  that  kind  of  admiration  and  reverence,  that  large 
sympathy  and  sorrow,  which  to  feel,  gratifies,  and  we  may  say 
flatters,  our  sense  of  the  humanity  within  us.  The  history  of 
the  last  generation,  crowded  as  it  has  been  with  events  of 
tragic  and  pathetic  interest,  has  added  to  these  memorable 
places  in  our  country  more  than  all  the  preceding  generations. 
And  thereby  is  our  country  enriched  emotionally  and  spirit- 
ually, even  though  the  enrichment  has  in  it  a  large  heritage  of 
sadness  both  for  us  and  for  our  posterity.  This  profound 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES  345 

truth,  that  things  memorable  in  human  history  are  to  so  large 
an  extent  pathetic  and  tragic,  the  great  Roman  poet  felt  and 
uttered  in  that  untranslatable  phrase  respecting  the  "tears 
which  are  in  all  mortal  things."  If  this  is  a  pagan  philosophy 
which  may  conduct  us  through  the  Inferno  of  life's  experiences 
but  which  needs  a  new  guide  for  its  Paradise,  be  it  so!  The 
question  is  raised, — it  almost  inevitably  must  be — whether 
it  were  better  for  the  human  race  and  the  universe  that  this 
old  world,  for  the  sake  of  its  many  endeared  spots,  its  bowers 
of  bliss,  its  trysting  places,  its  sweet  cottages  and  gardens 
and  orchards,  its  college  walks  and  groves,  should  be  continued 
on  forever;  or  whether  on  account  of  its  earthquakes  and 
devastations  by  fire  and  flood,  its  dungeons  and  battle-fields, 
its  bridges  of  sighs  and  morgues  and  chambers  of  horrors,  it 
should  be  blotted  out  of  existence  and  memory,  and  a  new 
heaven  and  new  earth  be  installed  for  the  future  abode  of 
mankind.  All  this  of  course,  in  the  Greek  expression,  lies 
on  the  lap  of  God.  What  is  possible  for  man  to  do  is  so  to 
minimize  the  battlefields  and  dungeons,  and  all  memorials 
of  wickedness  and  all  removable  incitements  to  tragedy  and 
crime,  and  so  to  multiply  reminders  of  virtue  and  love  and 
patriotism  and  religion,  that  if  the  Lord  God  should  once 
more  as  of  old  walk  in  his  earthly  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day, 
he  would  not  repent  that  he  had  made  man  and  made  this 
earth  for  him  to  dwell  in. 

Let  us  then,  whenever  and  wherever  we  can,  revive  in  the 
memory  of  the  new  generations  the  deeds  of  good  and  wise 
men,  leaders  of  thought  and  enterprise,  of  morality  and  re- 
ligion, and  let  us  place  memorials  of  them  where  they  will 
proclaim  the  admiration  and  gratitude  due  from  our  genera- 
tion to  the  memory  of  those  whose  sacrifices  and  heroisms 
have  given  us  our  better  place  in  the  world's  life. 

We  pass  on  to  the  larger  reflection  suggested  by  our  theme— 
what  we  do  for  our  brethren  and  companions'  sakes.  This 
is  not  the  question  which  concerns  our  relations  with  our 


346  THE  VERY  ELECT 

fellow  men  in  general,  with  those  whom  our  Lord  has  in  mind 
when  he  says,  "  Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto 
you" — not  those  he  elsewhere  calls  "others."  It  is  not  a 
question  of  altruism,  it  is  not  concerned  with  that  benevolence 
which  a  great  philosopher  defined  as  "love  to  being  in  general," 
it  is  not  cosmopolitan  good  will;  it  is  what  we  think  and  say 
and  do  for  the  sake  of  that  select  group  of  souls  who  are  our 
brethren  and  companions,  those  who  are  dear  to  us  by  kinship 
and  those  whom  we  endear  to  us  by  choice  and  wont  and  who 
walk  the  way  of  life  with  us.  It  needs  but  little  reflection 
to  be  convinced  that  what  we  do  and  what  we  are  by  reason 
of  the  mutual  influences  which  pass  to  and  fro  between  us 
and  these  our  brethren  and  companions,  make  up  a  large  part 
of  all  we  do  and  are.  How  many  choices  do  we  make  on  purely 
abstract  grounds,  as  being  in  themselves  right,  or  prudent, 
or  beneficent  with  regard,  as  our  philosopher  said,  to  "being 
in  general,"  or  any  considerations  in  general?  If  we  put  on  one 
side  those  purely  selfish  considerations  which  surely  are  far 
fewer  than  the  accusers  of  mankind  aver,  and  if  we  first  ana- 
lyze and  then  group  these  considerations  which  come  to  us  from 
family,  neighborhood,  friendship,  vocation,  party,  city,  coun- 
try, church,  how  many  are  left  to  be  determined  by  strictly 
non-personal  reasons?  How  much  for  instance  of  the  esthetic 
element  of  life  would  be  left  if  we  should  cease  to  create  and 
embellish  and  dignify  for  brethren  and  companions'  sakes? 
How  many  flowers  would  be  cultivated  for  any  one's  personal 
enjoyment,  if  there  were  no  occasions  for  expressions  of  sorrow 
and  sympathy  and  affection?  What  would  become  of  half 
the  smiles,  of  the  tears  that  flow  not  from  pain,  of  the  right 
hand  deeds  that  the  left  hand  knows  not  of,  the  stealthy 
charities  that  blush  to  find  themselves  fame?  Which  of  the 
graces  and  amenities  of  St.  Paul's  thirteenth  of  Corinthians 
would  survive  if  we  had  to  do  only  with  "men,"  with  "others," 
and  not  with  brethren  and  companions?  Of  course  we  are 
theoretical  individualists.  We  are  not  creatures  of  our  en- 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES  347 

vironment — oh  no!  We  were  never  in  bondage  to  any  man, 
not  even  in  the  dear  bondage  to  our  brethren  and  companions. 
Nevertheless  we  do  what  we  do,  and  we  are,  largely,  yes  mainly, 
what  we  are,  for  our  brethren  and  companions'  sakes. 

And  this  is  well,  and  right,  and  in  accord  with  the  divine 
constitution  of  men  and  things.  As  Pope  says : 

"God  never  made  an  independent  man: 
'Twould  mar  the  concord  of  his  general  plan." 

Such  a  one,  such  an  impossible,  would  be  less  than  man,  less 
even  than  some  brutes,  for  they  are  gregarious  and  do  things 
for  each  other's  sakes.  The  non-social  brutes  are  at  a  dis- 
advantage and  die  out  soonest.  If  the  lions  would  combine 
for  each  others'  good  they  could  put  Nimrod  and  all  his  follow- 
ing to  flight.  History  shows  us  how  men  originally  became 
strong  and  dominant  and  permanent  by  learning  to  live  to- 
gether as  brethren  and  companions.  The  personal  tie  is  the 
germ  of  social  order  and  furnishes  the  norm  of  all  tribal  and 
national  cohesion  and  development.  Mere  mechanical  organ- 
ization does  not  attain  the  highest  results — it  needs  personal 
affinities  to  get  its  greatest  strength.  Thereby  it  secures  not 
strength  only — not  mere  solidity,  but  genius  and  enthus- 
iasm— what  we  mean  by  esprit  du  corps.  The  finest  humanity 
comes  of  it.  It  is  what  makes  homes  out  of  households.  It 
builds  great  and  noble  cities.  It  begets  brotherhoods.  It 
inspires  both  the  human  and  the  divine  side  of  all  true  religion. 
The  old  hymn  some  of  us  learned  when  we  were  children 
lamented: 

"Our  nearest  joys  and  dearest  friends, 

The  partners  of  our  blood, 
How  they  divide  our  wavering  minds, 
And  leave  but  half  for  God!" 

whereas  it  is  one  of  the  sacred  offices  of  dear  friends  to  help  our 
wavering  minds  to  decide  all  for  God.  It  is  this  consideration 
which  furnishes  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  Christian  Church, 


348  THE  VERY  ELECT 

and  of  all  true  churches.  Our  Lord  brought  to  men,  not  a 
religion  for  the  solitary  individual,  not  for  the  hermitage  and 
the  desert,  but  for  brethren  and  companions,  for  the  commun- 
ion of  saints,  and  though  his  followers  will  be  ultimately  a 
multitude  which  no  man  can  number,  the  secret  of  Jesus  and 
the  whole  constitution  of  his  Church  is  set  forth  in  those  most 
precious  of  all  his  words,  "Where  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together  in  my  name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst  of  them." 

And  yet  on  the  other  hand,  let  us  be  frank  enough  to  confess, 
this  same  social  spirit,  this  doing  things  for  brethren  and  com- 
panions' sakes,  is  a  fruitful  source  of  evil — of  some  of  the  worst 
evils  that  virtue  and  social  well-being  have  to  contend  with. 
It  is  of  the  essence  of  all  conspiracy — of  all  confederacy  of 
mischief — of  all  " treasons,  stratagems  and  spoils."  In  his- 
tory it  is  responsible  for  the  League  of  the  Assassins,  the  dark 
assizes  of  the  Vehmgerichte,  the  atrocities  of  the  Jacobins. 
In  our  own  times  it  is  sponsor  for  the  Camorra,  the  Mafia,  the 
Black  Hand,  and  the  nameless  new  crimes  of  our  day.  The 
worst  is  that  it  is  able  to  maintain  its  own  self-respect  and  to 
draw  to  itself  a  species  of  devotion,  by  its  semblance  and  some- 
times its  reality,  of  heroic  self-abnegation.  One  contribution 
it  has  certainly  made  to  current  discussion  as  to  the  basis  of 
morals.  It  upsets  the  theory  that  the  one  essence  of  all  sin 
is  selfishness — for  here  are  criminals  of  the  darkest  type  ready 
on  the  instant  to  immolate  themselves  out  of  loyalty  to  their 
brethren  and  companions  in  evil.  May  we  not  borrow  the 
exclamation  of  one  who  was  victim  to  a  confederation  she  had 
herself  encouraged  and  say,  "O  loyalty,  what  crimes  have  been 
committed  in  thy  name !" — or  to  challenge  a  still  more  lofty 
obligation,  "0  noblesse  oblige,  into  what  toils  of  error  and 
wrong  hast  thou  beguiled  us!" 

Shall  we  then,  as  some  do,  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
corporate  conscience  is  always  and  everywhere,  in  all  callings 
and  professions,  in  all  societies,  guilds  and  churches,  an  inferior 
conscience,  one  which  upholds  a  lower  standard  than  the  indi- 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES  349 

vidual  conscience?  Is  the  wisest  man,  and  the  safest  guide 
in  difficult  conduct,  the  man  who  thrusts  aside  all  social  and 
conventional  standards,  and  evolves  in  his  own  conscience  a 
purely  impersonal  standard,  an  eternal  and  immutable  moral- 
ity? We  shall  not  be  dealing  long  with  this  man,  this  represen- 
tative individualist,  without  finding  him  to  have  potentially 
the  merits  and  the  errors  of  the  fanatic,  that  while  he  is  in- 
flexibly true  to  his  conviction,  the  conviction  itself  is  apt  to  be 
narrow,  intense,  dogmatic;  that  he  lacks  the  charity  needed 
in  order  that  he  may  be  just,  and  the  sympathy  with  the  good 
which  corrects  the  exaggerations  of  a  hot  indignation  against 
evil.  If  the  corporate  conscience  is  lax,  opportunist,  want- 
ing in  discernment  and  vigilance,  the  hermit  conscience,  the 
inquisitor's  conscience,  is  too  self-centered  to  be  human,  too 
positive  to  be  trustworthy.  The  individualist  conscience, 
impervious  to  all  considerations  of  sympathy  and  humanity, 
is  the  Javert,  the  police  inspector  of  the  great  French  romance. 
He  is  at  his  best  in  the  old  Hebrew  prophet,  seeing  only  evil 
to  be  denounced,  speaking  only  of  the  wrath  foredoomed  to 
follow. 

What  then  is  our  resort  in  this  apparent  dilemma?  Here  are 
two  strong  motives  to  right-doing  moving  in  different  though 
not  contrary  directions;  here  are  two  dangers,  one  of  them 
threatening  us  from  each  side  of  the  moral  situation.  The 
answer  is  as  it  so  often  is  in  life — not  that  the  truth  lies  in 
media,  in  compromises  and  mutual  concessions,  but  in  the 
interplay,  the  fuller  and  freer  action  of  both  motives,  the  kind 
of  adjustment  which  as  in  the  parallelogram  of  forces,  retains 
the  direction  of  both  the  competing  agents.  The  individual 
conscience  must  not  yield  up  what  it  approves  because  friend- 
ship tempts  it  with  an  inferior  good,  balanced  up  by  its  own 
charm;  but  the  individual  conscience  is  not  infallible,  and  is 
liable  to  go  very  far  wrong  if  it  is  self-centered  and  reclusive. 
The  contemplation  of  brethren  and  companions,  by  warming 
and  humanizing  the  moral  judgment,  enlightens  and  clarifies 


350  THE  VERY  ELECT 

it.  And  on  the  other  hand  the  social  feelings,  if  allowed 
exclusive  control,  tend  to  soften  the  moral  nature,  to  relax 
its  fibre,  to  tone  down  its  sharpness  of  discernment,  its  tenacity 
of  purpose.  The  social  conscience  needs  now  and  then  to  go 
into  retreat  and  work  out  its  problems,  as  St.  Paul  did  in  Arabia, 
as  our  Lord  did  in  the  wilderness  of  Judea.  The  great  decisions 
and  choices  of  life  should  be  made  not  by  conscience  alone,  not 
through  the  affections  alone,  but  by  the  whole  man,  by  that 
aggregate  of  all  the  elements  of  our  complex  being  which  our 
Lord  sums  up  as  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and  strength. 

The  popular  watchwords  are  always  significant.  Not  many 
months  ago  the  word  which  caught  the  eye  oftenest  as  it  wan- 
dered up  and  down  any  contemporary  page  was  " graft;"  the 
word  is  now  "sane."  What  men  most  hated  and  feared  was 
indicated  by  the  one  word;  what  they  are  now  yearning  for  by 
the  other.  The  man  wanted  for  the  hour  in  all  departments 
of  life  is  the  "sane"  man.  And  what  is  it  that  we  want  in 
him?  We  want  the  right  balance  of  judgment  between  the 
opportunist  and  the  fanatic,  between  the  abstract  and  theo- 
retical right  and  the  attainable  best,  between  Javert  and  the 
Bishop,  between  Tolstoi  and  the  pragmatists.  Our  Lord  in  de- 
scribing John  the  Baptist  used  a  highly  significant  expression. 
He  said  that  John  was  a  prophet  and  more  than  a  prophet, 
and  that  he  that  is  least  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  greater 
than  he  that  is  more  than  a  prophet.  What  is  it  that  makes  a 
Christian  man  more  righteous  than  Javert,  more  righteous  than 
Jeremiah  or  John  the  Baptist?  It  is  a  new  sense  of  the  divine 
humanity  in  man  which  recognizes  a  like  humanity  in  all  men, 
and  for  its  sake,  and  their  sakes,  bears,  and  forbears,  and  sym- 
pathizes, and  hopes,  and  co-operates,  and  as  the  new  and  finer 
version  of  the  passage  in  the  gospel  renders  it,  "never  despair- 
ing." The  one  note  of  truth  which  socialism  has  seized  upon 
is  this:  that  there  is  presumptive  good  in  the  association  of 
man  with  man  for  a  common  interest;  that  it  is  human,  and 
moral,  and  every  way  auspicious,  to  do  and  to  be  for  brethren 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES  351 

and  companions'  sakes.  And  that  is  the  direction  in  which 
we  are  tending — to  the  condition  in  which  we  respect,  and  trust, 
and  co-operate  with — not  others — not  all  men  indiscriminately, 
but  brethren  and  companions,  those  whose  lives  are  bound 
up  with  ours  by  what  Wordsworth  beautifully  terms  "natural 
piety,"  those  of  whom  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
speaks  as  so  associated  in  the  one  great  and  continuous  faith 
of  the  elders  and  their  heirs  of  today  that  they  without  us  and 
we  without  them  cannot  be  made  perfect. 

What  we  have  been  thinking  of  as  an  abstract  situation  has 
been  going  on  about  us  in  the  actual  world  in  recent  days. 
The  revival  of  righteousness  of  which  so  much  is  said  has  been 
a  vigorous  protest  from  the  individual  conscience  against  the 
laxity  of  the  corporate  conscience.  It  was  an  effort  to  replace 
a  conventional  standard  by  one  which  was  impersonal  and 
absolute.  It  was  a  movement  called  for,  right  in  intent  and 
fruitful  of  good  results.  But  in  certain  regions  it  has  degen- 
erated to  a  vaporing  preachment,  and  a  somewhat  prevalent 
holier-than-thou  attitude  of  men  who  are  trying  to  get  the 
public  ear — precursors,  if  not  arrested,  of  a  moral  collapse. 
In  so  far  as  this  campaign  for  righteousness  has  separated  us 
into  antagonistic  groups,  critical  of  each  others'  standards  of 
right  and  wrong,  suspicious,  declamatory,  objurgatory,  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  it  is  time  to  come  back  to  simpler 
relations,  to  saner  judgments,  to  a  more  trustful  spirit.  Our 
hope  is  that  the  time  is  near  when  once  more  men  may  have 
some  confidence  in  their  fellow  men,  when  the  hand  of  friend- 
ship may  be  ungloved  and  its  clasp  close  and  warm,  when  men 
will  once  more  do  and  dare  great  and  noble  deeds  for  brethren 
and  companions'  sakes. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Classes: 

The  baccalaureate  pulpit  is  charged  in  our  day  with  some- 
times preaching  into  the  wide  air  and  forgetting  its  proper 
audience.  But  on  the  other  hand  it  is  but  a  fitting  recognition 


352  THE  VERY  ELECT 

of  the  new  status  into  which  the  graduates  pass,  that  they 
should  be  regarded  as  now  part  of  the  great  public,  who  are 
arbiters  in  all  questions  of  general  interest.  In  any  case  the 
theme  of  this  hour  is  pertinent  to  you  and  such  as  you,  to  those 
passing  from  the  secluded  into  the  social  and  communal  life, 
namely,  that  you  should  at  once  interest  yourselves  practically 
in  those  problems  which  concern  your  fellow  men,  and  es- 
pecially that  you  should  get  into  close  touch  and  warm  re- 
lationship with  those  who  will  be,  for  their  good  and  yours, 
your  brethren  and  companions  in  a  common  human  life.  We  all 
owe  some  duties  to  all  mankind,  to  men  in  general,  to  society, 
to  art,  to  science,  to  religion.  But  within  this  wide  area  of 
relationship  there  are  certain  divinely  appointed  human  soci- 
eties, which  demand  our  primal  allegiance  and  within  which 
our  best  life  will  be  lived.  Altruism  is  fine,  benevolence, 
"love  to  being  in  general,"  is  noble,  but  kindly  regard  for 
one's  neighbors,  caring  for  one's  own,  the  cherishing  of  friends, 
devotion  to  the  interests  of  one's  city  and  community,  and 
especially  fellowship  in  one's  church,  the  communion  of  saints, 
is  to  be  true  to  ourselves  and  to  others,  to  be  human,  Christ- 
like. 

It  will  be  a  great  loss  out  of  the  possible  fullness  of  your  lives, 
if  you  suffer  yourselves  to  drift  into  an  attitude  of  independ- 
ency, of  isolation,  of  superiority,  of  such  a  dread  of  conformity 
that  you  make  a  virtue  of  nonconformity,  of  singularity.  Do  not 
I  beseech  you,  either  by  choice  or  by  sufferance,  get  enrolled 
in  that  coterie,  said  to  be  fostered  by  our  higher  education, 
of  men,  who  hold  themselves  aloof,  and  sulk  and  scorn,  men 
for  whom  no  party  is  good  enough,  no  church  good  enough, 
no  calling  or  society  or  relationship  so  free  from  blame  or 
danger  that  they  can  afford  to  have  part  in  it.  In  the  world 
you  are  going  out  to  meet  there  are  some  bad  men,  but  there 
are  more  good  ones,  some  vain  and  frivolous  women,  but  more 
who  are  worthy  of  your  admiration  and  love. 

Your  next  greatest   test — more  severe  and  more  telling 


FOR  BRETHREN  AND  COMPANIONS'  SAKES  353 

on  your  future  than  all  the  examinations  of  your  past  four 
years — will  be  your  choices  of  fellowships,  of  those  personal 
intimacies  and  relationships  which  will,  much  more  than  you 
now  imagine,  determine  both  your  own  satisfaction  and  your 
efficiency  in  life.  One  main  value  of  the  education  you  have 
received  is  that  it  has  prepared  you  to  make  such  choices  wisely 
and  to  carry  them  into  effect  with  ample  resources.  You  are 
not  shut  up  to  any  narrow,  predetermined  career.  But  on 
whatever  career  you  determine  let  a  large  consideration  in  the 
choice  be  the  personal  one,  the  associations  into  which  you 
will  be  brought,  the  ties  which  will  be  formed,  the  soul  unions 
which  will  naturally  and  inevitably  come  to  pass,  the  brethren 
and  companions  who  with  clasped  hands  will  walk  with  you 
in  the  way  of  life.  Happy,  most  happy  will  you  be,  if  in  after 
years  you  shall  find  yourselves  of  the  goodly  company,  that 
intellectual  and  spiritual,  that  human  and  Christian  company 
of  whom  it  can  be  said  as  of  old,  "Behold  how  good  and  how 
pleasant  is  is  for  brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity." 

23 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD 

Not  slothful  in  business;  fervent  in  spirit;  serving  the  Lord.     Rom.  xiiill. 

THIS  chiefest  of  the  apostles,  this  man  most  human  and 
most  saintly,  who  represents  to  us  at  the  same  time  supreme 
good  sense  and  the  highest  spirituality,  appears  to  think  that 
the  same  man  may  be  a  very  active  man  and  a  very  religious 
man.  He  evidently  does  not  think  that  because  a  man  is  very 
earnest  in  everyday  affairs  he  is  unlikely  to  be  equally  earnest 
in  his  religion;  nor,  because  he  is  a  man  of  reverence  toward 
God,  a  man  of  faith  and  prayer,  that  he  is  likely  to  be  a  narrow- 
minded  man  and  a  hypocrite.  In  fact  our  Scriptures  through- 
out seem  to  imply  that  to  be  a  busy  and  prosperous  man  and  to 
be  a  man  of  piety,  involve  no  incompatibility — call  for  no 
surprise.  Far  back  in  history,  or  in  historic  fiction — it  makes 
no  difference  which — the  biblical  writer  tells  us  of  one  who  was 
a  great  man  of  the  East,  that  he  had  vast  wealth  and  was 
held  in  high  honor,  and  that  he  " feared  God,"  which  was  the 
writer's  way  of  saying  that  he  was  a  man  of  piety.  In  the 
first  century  of  our  era  we  are  made  acquainted  with  a  Roman 
soldier  in  Palestine  who  was  "a  devout  man,  and  one  that 
feared  God,  and  prayed  to  God  always."  And  neither  writer 
betrays  any  surprise  that  a  great  sheik  or  a  good  soldier  should 
be  a  devout  man.  Nor  is  modern  biography  lacking  in  con- 
spicuous examples  of  the  combination  of  these  two  qualities 
in  the  same  person.  There  occur  to  us  at  once,  Gladstone 
among  statesmen,  Faraday  among  scientists,  Stevenson  in 
literature,  merchant  princes  innumerable,  soldiers  many, 
including  Havelock,  Gordon,  Howard,  Lee.  But  more  con- 
vincing than  these  examples  of  distinguished  men  would  be  the 
inconspicuous  men  whom  we  personally  know — neighbors, 
townsmen,  men  in  the  same  social  circle,  in  the  same  church — 
men  whom  we  know  intimately  and  of  whom  we  are  perfectly 

354 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD       355 

and  equally  sure  that  their  secular  life  is  strenuous  and  their 
piety  genuine  and  fervid.  This  is  to  be  our  thought  and  our 
lesson  today — that  this  union  of  secular  activity  with  the 
temper  and  habit  of  piety  is  the  ideal  of  human  character — 
not  one  admirable  and  rare  species  of  excellence,  but  the 
normal  standard  of  well-being  and  well-doing  for  all. 

The  Christian  conception  of  human  life  is  not  intolerant 
of  differences.  It  can  bear  with  and  turn  to  good  account 
many  styles  of  character.  It  can  get  advantage  from  a  few 
anemic,  ascetic  saints.  It  can  pardon  one  who  in  his  zeal  to 
do  good  works  sometimes  forgets  to  say  his  prayers.  But 
Christianity  holds  up  as  the  complete  man,  the  complete 
modern  man,  the  man  who  is  not  only  diligent  in  business, 
but  is  fervent  in  spirit,  serving  the  Lord — one  who  now,  as 
ages  ago,  is  a  devout  man,  one  who  fears  God  and  prays  to 
God  always. 

What  is  piety?  We  will  avoid  any  sharp  definition  lest  we 
slip  unawares  into  the  easily  besetting  sin  of  intolerance. 
Let  the  idea  before  us  be  large  enough  to  include  all  forms  of 
it  which  are  real  and  genuine.  So  understanding,  we  can 
hardly  do  better  than  to  borrow  Jeremy  Taylor's  phrase  and 
say  that  piety  is  "the  practise  of  the  presence  of  God."  Of 
course  as  there  are  gods  many  and  lords  many,  so  there  may 
be  a  Buddhist,  a  Confucian,  a  Mohammedan  piety,  perhaps 
even  a  Positivist,  an  Agnostic  piety,  which  as  piety  may  be  as 
real  and  genuine  as  any  other.  The  devout  Moslem  certainly 
in  his  way  practises  the  presence  of  his  God,  and  in  so  far  is 
entitled  to  be  regarded  as  a  man  of  piety — and  I  suppose  John 
Stuart  Mill  had  his  style  of  piety  or  substitute  for  piety. 
But  for  us,  not  begging  any  question,  respecting  every  right 
or  obligation  of  individual  judgment,  what  is  the  conception 
of  God  on  which  the  serious-minded  man  will  today  find  a 
basis  for  piety?  Is  not  God  for  us,  the  God  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures,  the  God  of  modern  science  and  modern  philosophy, 
the  God  of  the  conscience  and  heart  of  the  great  multitude  of 


356  THE  VERY  ELECT 

sober-minded  and  right-living  people,  this  generalized  and 
composite  conception  of  God,  taken  into  and  wrought  over  by 
each  man's  individual  thought  and  conscience  and  heart? 
If  it  be  said  that  this  is  a  vague  and  infinitely  variable  concep- 
tion of  the  God  whose  presence  we  are  to  practise,  the  answer 
is  that  vague  and  variable  as  it  is  in  the  statement,  the  actual 
substance  of  it  is  not  only  what  the  necessity  of  the  case 
absolutely  requires,  but  is  in  each  man's  soul  a  potentiality, 
which  if  realized,  would  irradiate  each  life  with  a  grace  and 
a  glory  transcending  all  good  from  all  other  sources.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  opening  the  soul,  and  keeping  the  soul  open, 
to  those  influences  which  we  rightly  call  divine  because  they 
imply  that  man  is  truly  a  partaker  of  the  divine  nature.  For, 
if  we  are  indeed  made  in  the  image  of  God,  if  we  in  our  lower 
capacity  have  the  same  attributes  in  kind  though  different  in 
degree,  the  same  reason  and  moral  judgment,  the  same  free 
will,  then  we  are  capable  of  the  society  of  God,  capable  of 
sharing  our  thoughts  with  God,  capable  of  understanding  what 
he  says  to  us,  of  judging  the  reasoning  by  which  he  addresses 
truth  to  us,  capable  of  loving  and  hating,  of  choosing  and  refus- 
ing, as  he  does.  It  becomes  then  perfectly  natural, — the  truly 
human  on  our  side,  as  it  is  the  truly  divine  on  his  side, — that 
the  relation  between  God  and  us  should  be  mutual;  on  his 
side  a  gracious,  loving,  communicating  bestowal  of  himself, 
of  all  of  himself  which  he  is  capable  of  bestowing,  and  on  our 
side  a  frank,  open-hearted,  reverent,  trustful  acceptance  of 
himself,  of  all  of  himself  which  we  are  capable  of  receiving. 
In  some  former  times  of  men's  ignorance  the  uppermost  feeling 
of  man  toward  God,  coupled  with  other  feelings,  but  over- 
bearing them,  was  that  of  fear.  Men  thought  of  him  as  far 
off  and  dreaded  to  have  him  nearer.  Then  by  degrees,  as  men 
knew  God  better,  and  themselves  better,  they  began  to  think 
of  him  and  were  pleased  to  think  of  him  as  near,  "not  far  from 
any  one  of  us";  and  now  at  last  since  Jesus  manifested  God 
to  us  as  he  is,  we  are  coming  to  think  of  him  as  close  to  us — 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD       357 

"nearer  than  breathing" — yes,  as  within  us,  sharing  with  us 
our  human  thoughts,  feelings,  choices.  The  God  with  whom 
we  have  to  do,  who  was  once  to  men  a  kind  of  bugbear,  one 
with  whom  men  had  to  do,  but  would  rather  have  had  nothing 
to  do,  is,  when  we  come  to  see  things  rightly,  the  one  being  to 
whom  we  are  so  related  that  without  him  we  were  something 
less  than  men,  wandering  in  the  limbo  of  unrealized  being, 
living  or  half  living  a  life  imperfect,  misshapen,  truncated, 
but  in  whom  and  with  whom  we  come  to  our  completeness,  to 
ourselves,  to  manhood,  as  God  made  it  to  be. 

If  now  this  language  seems  to  be  somewhat  vague  and 
visionary,  let  us  come  nearer  to  the  practical  life  of  our  every- 
day man  who  is  practising  the  presence  of  God,  and  ask  what 
is  the  actual  dynamic  of  piety  in  a  human  soul  and  a  human 
life,  what  does  it  contribute  to  character  and  conduct  con- 
ceived after  the  highest  pattern?  I  think  we  may  say  that 
true  piety  contributes  to  character  a  certain  elevation,  a  cer- 
tain nobility,  a  certain  refinement,  which  naturally  grow  out 
of  this  conscious  union  with  God.  This  certainly  is  what  it 
should  produce.  A  man  who  practises  the  presence  of  God 
should  have  something  of  the  shining  face  which  Moses  had 
when  he  came  down  from  the  mount.  Piety  levels  all  distinc- 
tions of  person  and  fortune,  for  in  the  presence  of  God  all  men 
are  equal,  or  rather  it  raises  all  men  to  a  height  hi  which  all 
rank  disappears.  The  Scottish  peasant  in  his  Saturday  night 
exercise,  reverently  laying  aside  his  bonnet,  says,  "Let  us 
worship  God,"  and  no  laird,  or  prelate,  or  king,  has  a  higher 
rank  in  the  universe.  The  note  of  piety  dignifies  all  other 
acts  and  duties  and  brings  a  divine  beauty  down  into  ordinary 
human  life.  A  life  without  piety  may  be  mathematically 
correct — correct  according  to  arithmetic,  but  not  expansive 
and  illimitable  after  the  manner  of  geometry.  It  has  no  in- 
finite radii,  no  asymptotes,  no  great  celestial  circles.  Or  to 
get  a  figure  from  another  field,  a  life  without  piety  may  be 
good  prose,  accurate,  rational,  syllogistic, — not  melodious, 


358  THE  VERY  ELECT 

not  lyrical.  The  lyrical  element  conies  into  life,  adding  to  the 
good  conscience  toward  God  and  man,  with  the  three  religious 
graces  celebrated  by  St.  Paul,  faith,  hope,  love.  Life  barely 
intellectual  on  ever  so  high  a  plane  is  in  danger  of  becoming, 
usually  does  become,  cynical;  that  is,  half  conscious  and  half 
suspicious  of  its  own  merit,  it  looks  with  disdain  upon  the 
imperfect  lives  of  other  men,  the  lives  which  with  all  their 
imperfections  God  pities  and  with  a  great  yearning  love  seeks 
to  redeem  and  reinspire.  One  of  the  great  needs  of  our  age 
is  a  cure  for  cynicism,  and  the  only  cure  is  piety,  the  piety  which 
first  breeds  humility,  and  then  passes  on  to  Godlike  charity, 
and  culminates  in  a  blended  love  and  service  of  God  and  man. 
At  this  point,  if  we  listen,  we  shall  hear  it  said,  "But  sane 
human  life  has  no  place  for  the  mystic,  the  transcendental, 
the  ecstatic.  To  live  well  every  day,  to  be  true  and  kind  and 
public-spirited  in  all  ordinary  life,  is  to  be  virtuous,  and  to  be 
capable  of  heroism  and  sacrifice  in  great  emergencies  is  to  be 
religious,  and  this  twofold  character  fills  the  whole  duty  and 
exhausts  the  whole  capacity  of  man."  Yes,  if  man  is  nothing 
but  the  highest  animal  in  the  animal  series  of  being,  if  he  stands 
related  to  God  as  other  animals,  as  simply  a  creature,  a  product, 
a  beautiful  and  noble  piece  of  workmanship,  thrown  off  by 
the  Creator  like  a  sun  or  a  star,  to  perform  its  allotted  part  in 
the  universe,  but  no  part  of  God's  self.  But  if  man  is  a  being 
associated  with  God  in  the  order  of  the  divine  universe,  if  it  is 
not  a  fancy,  but  a  fact,  that  in  God  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being,  if  we  are  not  produced  by  him,  but  born  of  him, 
then  whatever  in  this  relation  there  may  be  of  mystic  and 
transcendental  is  certainly  a  legitimate  part  of  human  experi- 
ence. To  leave  out  of  consideration  what  the  old  divines 
called  the  Godward  side  of  man's  nature,  to  shut  God  out 
of  one's  thought  and  one's  heart,  is  an  unnatural  act,  a  crime 
against  nature,  is  not  only  ungrateful,  unfilial,  it  is  unnatural; 
it  represses  the  instincts  of  the  normal  human  heart.  If 
theologians  had  not  perverted  the  true  meaning  of  the  word 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD   359 

"nature,"  and  the  word  "natural,"  we  should  not  now  be  in 
controversy  over  the  statement  that  the  love  of  God  is  natural 
piety,  that  is,  that  it  is  involved  in  man's  true  nature  to  believe 
in  and  to  rejoice  in  his  fellowship  with  God.  The  atheistic 
attitude,  the  attitude  of  hostility  or  indifference  toward  God, 
is  a  sophisticated  state  of  mind,  in  its  way  as  perverse  as  would 
be  the  same  attitude  on  the  part  of  a  child  toward  its  father  or 
mother.  The  belief  that  every  child  naturally  fears  and  hates 
God  has  been  overborne  by  the  heart  theology  of  innumerable 
mothers  who  have  taught  the  little  ones  to  lift  innocent  hands 
and  hearts  to  the  Father  in  heaven,  ere  a  hard  and  gainsaying 
world  has  perverted  natural  piety  into  the  unnatural  state 
of  those  who  are  without  God  in  the  world. 

But  here  candor  requires  us  to  admit  and  to  explain  the  fact 
that  the  pietistic  element  of  religion  has  not  at  the  present 
day  the  prominence  it  has  had  in  some  former  ages  of  human 
history — that  it  has  in  fact  come  into  a  certain  measure  of 
disrepute,  especially  in  certain  climates  and  zones  of  the  social 
and  philosophic  spheres.  One  reason  for  this  is  unquestionably 
the  prevalence  of  counterfeit  piety  and  the  ease  with  which 
true  piety  is  counterfeited.  The  worst  of  anything,  we  are 
taught,  is  the  corruption  of  the  best.  While  nothing  is  more 
attractive  than  genuine  piety,  so  guileless,  so  modest,  so  self- 
effacing,  nothing  is  more  repellent,  more  loathsome  than  false 
pride,  so  assuming,  so  unctuous,  so  ugly.  Here  fiction  has 
found  one  of  its  great  opportunities  and  has  exploited  it;  some- 
times it  must  be  admitted  in  honest  satire,  exposing,  casti- 
gating, flaying,  where  all  is  deserved;  sometimes  with  a  kind 
of  fiendish  glee  exulting  in  the  havoc  it  makes.  The  result 
of  all  this  has  been  to  create,  especially  in  the  quarters  indi- 
cated, a  reaction  against  all  manifestations  of  the  religious 
temper,  even  in  its  sanest  forms.  There  exists, — and,  it  is 
sometimes  charged,  with  special  protection  and  favor  in  our 
institutions  of  learning — a  cult,  not  of  impiety,  nobody  charges 
that,  but  of  a  certain  frigid  avoidance  of  every  feeling  and 


360  THE  VERY  ELECT 

every  utterance  which  verges  toward  piety — a  certain  high, 
stoical  disdain  of  any  ebullition  of  religious  sentiment.  This 
is  a  recurrence  of  a  state  of  things  which  prevailed  in  and  was 
characteristic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  under  the  then 
abjured  name  of  "  enthusiasm,"  all  religious  emotion  was 
condemned  and  outlawed,  an  attitude  of  mind  we  cannot 
say  of  soul,  for  soul  was  in  abeyance  which  was  shamed  into 
silence  and  then  won  to  repentance  by  the  splendid  outburst 
of  Methodism.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  believe  that  the 
present  state  of  things  is  so  serious  as  was  that  in  the  earlier 
century.  We  are  not  obliged  to  believe  that  the  men  of  culture 
and  philosophy  are  as  unsympathetic  and  indifferent  as  their 
reticence  would  seem  to  imply,  because  it  would  seem  to  be  an 
affront,  which  they  would  rightfully  resent,  if  we  were  to  con- 
ceive of  them  as  being  led  in  one  of  the  capital  concerns  of  life 
by  mere  antipathies,  that  they  are  impelled  to  extremes  in 
one  direction  merely  because  some  other  men  are  going  to 
extremes  in  another  direction.  The  poorest  possible  reason 
for  leaving  out  of  one's  plan  of  life  true  piety  would  be  the  false 
piety  of  others.  If  hypocrites  love  to  pray  in  the  market- 
places and  in  the  corners  of  the  streets  that  they  may  be  seen 
of  men,  that  furnishes  good  reason  for  entering  into  one's  closet 
and  praying  in  secret,  but  certainly  no  reason  whatever  for 
abstaining  from  prayer  anywhere  and  everywhere.  Who 
would  admit  that  his  religion,  or  his  lack  of  religion,  was  forced 
upon  him  by  the  Pharisees,  by  the  Tartuffes  and  the  Peck- 
sniffs of  a  human  comedy  mingled  of  realism  and  calumny? 
No  doubt  it  takes  courage  in  certain  quarters  to  profess  the 
same  beliefs  and  recite  the  same  old  familiar  words  which  are 
dear  to  simple  unilluminated  intellects  and  to  humble  and  con- 
trite hearts,  but  let  us  thank  God  that  there  are  many  who  do 
this  with  unconscious  bravery  and  genuine  simplicity. 

But  on  another  side  it  is  said  that  what  is  needed  today  is 
not  more  religion,  certainly  not  more  religiousness,  but  more 
righteousness.  Yes,  we  need  more  righteousness,  and  in  order 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD       361 

that  we  may  have  it,  we  need  more  religion,  yes,  more  piety. 
What  our  fathers  meant  by  the  fear  of  God,  which  is  not  very 
different  from  what  we  mean  by  the  love  of  God — for  love 
cast  out  fear  in  the  hearts  of  men  before  it  cast  it  out  of  their 
phrase — the  practise  of  the  presence  of  God  is  the  highest 
possible  incentive  to  right  living.  If  fraud  and  cruelty  and 
wrong  still  exist  in  communities  where  church  spires  abound, 
what  would  those  communities  be  if  the  churches  were  abol- 
ished? What  are  the  communities  on  the  frontier  where  no 
churches  yet  exist?  Why  do  men  who  do  not  care  for  piety, 
but  who  do  want  law,  and  right,  and  peace,  help  to  build 
churches  and  to  establish,  not  sacred  concerts  or  moral  lecture- 
ships, but  divine  worship? 

But  now,  to  bring  these  thoughts  to  a  close,  though  I  have 
sometimes  used  the  words  "religion"  and  "piety"  inter- 
changeably, I  have  meant  to  emphasize  that  kind  of  religion 
which  brings  man  into  face-to-face  and  heart-to-heart  relation- 
ship with  a  personal  God,  which  makes  much  of  the  paternal 
and  filial  society  between  God  and  us,  which  is  not  satisfied 
with  worshiping  him  as  Creator  and  Moral  Governor,  as  Al- 
mighty God,  as  the  Lord  God  of  Hosts,  but  yearns  after  him, 
and  joys  in  him,  as  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  as  the  fountain 
of  our  life,  as  the  source  from  which — from  whom — day  by  day 
and  hour  by  hour  we  draw  our  life  and  all  that  makes  life 
real  and  satisfying.  Is  this  kind  of  religion  on  the  wane? 
Is  it  a  thing  of  the  past?  Is  the  religion  of  the  future  to  be  a 
thing  of  abstractions,  of  metaphysics,  which  derives  life  from 
no  central  warmth,  which  offers  no  divine  heart  great  enough 
to  draw  to  itself  all  our  affection,  tender  enough  to  be  affected 
by  all  our  needs?  In  place  of  the  living  God  whom  our  fathers 
loved  and  served,  in  whose  name  we  and  our  children  have  been 
baptized,  are  we  to  be  relegated  to  a  stream  of  tendencies, 
a  system  of  cosmic  forces?  May  we  not  rather  believe,  or  at 
least  hope,  that  all  this  larger  and  sounder  knowledge  of  God 
which  has  come  to  our  age  through  the  revelations  of  God  in 


362  THE  VERY  ELECT 

science,  in  philosophy,  in  history,  in  life,  and  through  a  more 
thorough  study  of  God's  Holy  Word,  is  not  putting  God  farther 
from  us  but  really  bringing  him  closer  to  us,  making  him  more 
real  to  us  and  our  relation  to  him  more  intimate,  more  vital? 
There  are  signs  which  point  hopefully  in  this  direction.  The 
heart  element  in  religion,  the  greater  prominence  given  to  the 
feature  of  worship  in  public  devotions,  the  popular  approval 
of  spiritual  hymns  and  fervid  preaching,  and  above  all  the 
warm  interest  which  the  unofficial,  the  lay  constituency  is 
taking  in  evangelical  propagandism — all  this  seems  to  mean 
that  a  new  era  in  the  religious  life  of  Christendom  is  at  hand, 
is  already  here.  What  an  accession  of  power  would  come  to 
this  forward  movement  if  the  universities  and  colleges  would 
give  to  it  the  great  momentum  of  their  approval  and  co-opera- 
tion! if,  never  forsaking  their  proper  role  of  inculcating 
thoughtfulness  and  sincerity,  of  giving  out  light  rather  than 
heat  in  all  religious  movements,  they  should  come  out  from 
their  attitude  of  aloofness  and  silence,  and  take  the  place  of 
leadership  which  belongs  to  them!  The  universities  were 
once  at  the  front  of  God's  host  in  all  times  which  called  for 
conviction  and  courage  and  movement.  Let  us  hope  and  pray 
that  they  may  be  so  once  again  and  always. 

Members  of  the  Graduating  Class: 

It  will  hardly  be  necessary  to  tell  you,  certainly  not  to  tell 
most  of  this  audience,  that  my  theme  for  the  discourse  to  which 
you  have  listened  came  to  me  naturally,  almost  inevitably. 
For  some  time  past  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  while  college 
men  as  a  class  are  fully  as  responsive  to  the  claims  of  religion 
as  other  men,  even  more  so,  yet  for  reasons  growing  out  of 
current  discussion,  the  central  idea  of  religion,  the  religion  of 
religion,  ought  to  be  urged  upon  you  at  every  favorable  oppor- 
tunity and  especially  when  on  occasions  like  this  your  minds  are 
particularly  open  to  the  appeal  of  all  the  higher  things  of  the 
spirit.  And  now  in  the  providence  of  God,  we  are  all  thinking 


THE  DEVOUT  MAN  OF  THE  WORLD       363 

of  a  life  just  closed  which  most  beautifully  illustrates  and  en- 
forces these  considerations  a  thousand  times  more  effectively 
than  any  words  can  do.  An  institution  which  had  among  its 
prominent  men  one  whose  character  and  life  so  finely  exem- 
plified the  union  of  the  active  and  the  ideal  lives  must  not  lose 
the  force  of  such  an  example  on  all  its  members,  especially  its 
younger  members. 

To  have  gone  forth  from  this  city  and  this  University  a  poor 
boy,  and  to  have  acquired  wealth  and  public  respect  and  offices 
of  dignity  and  influence,  this  is  happily  in  our  country  not  an 
extraordinary  achievement;  but  with  all  this  to  have  had  the 
spiritual  side  of  life  equally  developed,  to  have  lived  a  life 
radiant  with  music  and  art  and  social  charms  leading  up  to  the 
crown  of  all  in  a  deep  religious  spirit  and  a  life  of  simple  piety, 
to  have  been  fervent  in  spirit,  serving  the  Lord;  this  is  what 
compels  our  admiration  and  love.  Will  any  one  hesitate  to  say 
that  this  element  of  character  was  needed  thus  to  command  our 
admiration  and  love?  That  the  simple,  modest,  courageous, 
unashamed  piety,  lived  out  in  secret  and  in  the  face  of  all  men, 
was  what  gave  to  Mr.  Converse  his  unique  place  in  our  respect 
as  well  as  our  affection?  Some  of  those  present  may  recall 
the  prayer  he  made  at  the  baccalaureate  service  four  years  ago. 
It  was  a  prayer  that  revealed,  as  free  prayer  often  does,  his  own 
religious  temper  and  attitude.  It  was  in  part  a  family  prayer, 
one  of  household  worship,  the  prayer  in  which  generations  of 
New  England  piety  had  expressed  itself,  and  it  was  also  the 
prayer  of  one  who  had  for  himself  practised  the  presence  of 
God.  The  last  occasion  on  which  Mr.  Converse  made  a  public 
appearance  was  at  a  meeting  the  object  of  which  was  to  pro- 
mote the  evangelical  movement  in  which  he  took  so  deep  an 
interest,  so  that  in  a  sense  his  last  words  were  in  unison  with 
Christ's  last  words  before  his  ascension.  Among  the  noble 
and  beautiful  things  which  he  did  for  this  University,  this 
example,  by  which  he  being  dead  yet  speaketh,  is  surely  the 
greatest. 


364  THE  VERY  ELECT 

You  who  like  him  will  be  business  men,  you  who  will  have 
to  do  with  the  most  beautiful  work  of  God's  hand,  the  human 
body,  you  who  are  to  teach  or  write  or  in  any  way  make  life 
purer  and  sweeter  and  stronger  in  the  home  or  in  the  great 
world — you  all  carry  with  you  the  obligation  and  the  oppor- 
tunity of  living  truer  and  nobler  and  holier  lives  because  of 
your  being  linked  in  the  fellowship  of  this  University  with  a 
life  which  was  filled,  as  was  his,  with  the  Spirit  and  Life  of  God. 


TRUE  CHRISTIAN  UNITY1 

Is  Christ  divided  ?    I  Cor.  i:  18. 

THE  meaning*  of  the  question  as  St.  Paul  asked  it  of  the 
Corinthians  was:  Is  Christ  the  head  of  a  party?  Is  the  spirit 
of  Christ  the  spirit  which  creates  factions?  Will  you,  called 
to  be  saints  in  Corinth,  in  the  name  of  Christ  separate  the 
Church  into  fragments  and  start  a  number  of  sects  into  warring 
strife?  Well  might  the  apostle  break  out  into  indignant 
remonstrance  when  he  saw  the  little  flock  of  believers  rending 
themselves  asunder  in  the  very  first  experiences  of  fellowship. 
How  would  his  great  heart  have  been  grieved,  could  he  have 
foreseen  what  the  ages  were  to  bring  of  disunion  and  jealousy 
and  schism,  and  of  feelings  more  akin  to  hate  than  love  among 
the  brethren  of  Christ  and  of  each  other! 

Many  times  during  the  almost  uninterrupted  prevalence 
of  this  spirit  of  discord  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  church, 
good  men,  pained  as  the  apostle  was,  have  had  searchings  of 
heart  respecting  the  causes  of  this  lamentable  state  of  things 
and  the  possible  remedies  for  it.  It  is  always  a  hopeful  sign 
when  this  new  quest  is  once  more  taken  up — a  sign  that 
the  evil  is  realized  and  the  Christian  mind  is  dissatisfied  and 
more  or  less  awakened  to  the  need  and  the  possibility  of 
remedial  action.  We  have  reason  to  think  that  our  own  is 
such  a  time,  that  one  more  effort  is  to  be  made  to  bring  Chris- 
tian souls  and  even  Christian  churches  into  more  harmonious 
relations  with  each  other — if  not  into  organic  unity  which 
at  times  looks  farther  off  than  ever,  into  what  may  even  be 
better  than  organic  unity,  were  that  possible — into  relations  of 
fraternity,  and  co-operation,  and  mutual  helpfulness,  into  a 
unity  of  spirit  and  of  action. 

i  Preached  at  the  First  Church,  Burlington,  December,  1909. 

365 


366  THE  VERY  ELECT 

In  addressing  ourselves  to  the  study  of  the  situation  and  of 
its  possibilities,  let  us  first  ask  what  have  been  some  of  the 
mistakes  of  the  past,  in  order  that  we  may  if  possible  in  the 
future  partly  avoid  and  partly  undo  them. 

1.  Nothing  is  plainer  from  the  survey  of  Christian  history 
than  that  whenever  the  church  has  become  a  political  party 
she  has  done  so  to  her  harm.     Political  power  the  church  must 
exert  if  she  is  to  do  her  work  in  the  world,  but  that  power 
is  to  be  exercised  on,  not  by,  political  parties.     Every  time 
the  church  has  attempted  to  do  her  work  by  controlling 
political  parties  as  parties,  she  has  become  herself  a  political 
party,  and  in  doing  so  has  abandoned  her  spiritual  ascendency. 
Puritanism,  for  example,  as  a  religion,  was  a  mighty  force 
for  good,  purifying  morals,  manners,  life,  and  even  politics. 
But  puritanism  as  a  political  party  ran  a  downward  course 
and  ended  by  bringing  harm  upon  the  cause  which  brought  it 
into  being.     Any  church  which  in  our  day,  here  in  the  United 
States,  allies  itself  with  a  political  party,  becomes  a  sort  of 
political  sect,  a  mongrel  organization,  for  all  good  purposes 
less  than  a  church  and  not  a  real  gain  to  a  party. 

2.  Secondly,  the  church  has  become  divisive  by  making  of 
itself  a  theological  fold,  and  therefore  necessarily  creating  a 
number  of  exclusive  and  antagonistic  theological  folds.     Over 
the  gateway  to  the  church,  which  ought  to  be  as  open  as  the 
morning  light  and  as  liberal  as  the  rain  and  sunshine,  the 
church  has  written  in  one  place  "Let  no  one  enter  here  who 
does  not  say  shiboleth  as  we  say  it,"    and  in  another  place 
"Whosoever  belie veth  not  the  Christian  faith  as  we  phrase  it 
will  no  doubt  perish  everlastingly."     Every  reflecting  Chris- 
tian, every  serious-minded  church,  will  have  some  theology,  for 
theology  is  the  account  which  the  reasoning  man  gives  of  his 
religion.     But  the  most  unreasonable  use  to  make  of  theology 
is  by  means  of  it  to  keep  out  of  the  Church  those  who  most 
need  its  nurture  in  order  to  attain  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth. 
The  great  mistake  has  been  in  confounding  a  knowledge  of 


TRUE  CHRISTIAN  UNITY  367 

theology  with  an  experience  of  saving  truth.  No  doubt  the 
human  will  is  free,  or  not  free :  no  doubt  the  Holy  Spirit  pro- 
ceeds from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  or  from  the  Father  only: 
both  propositions  cannot  well  be  true,  and  it  is  possible  to 
persuade  one's  self  and  perhaps  others  that  important  conse- 
quences depend  on  which  of  them  is  true;  but  few  would  deny 
that  souls  are  saved,  and  saintly  lives  are  lived  and  great 
and  good  deeds  are  wrought,  by  those  who  hold  either  or 
neither  of  them.  There  may  well  be  schools  of  theology, 
but  the  church  of  Christ  should  include  the  devout  students  of 
all  schools  and  those  who  are  members  of  no  school. 

3.  Again,  and  in  close  connection  with  this  last  consideration, 
the  church  mistakes  when  it  undertakes  to  make  of  itself  an 
intellectual  caste.  The  Christian  life  well  lived,  Christian 
aims  thoughtfully  carried  out,  Christian  truth  well  conned, 
tend  to  breed  an  intellectual  stock,  men  and  women  of  superior 
intelligence.  But  a  church  which  selects  and  favors  and  caters 
to  this  class,  excludes  a  great  majority  of  believers,  or  of  those 
who  should  be  believers,  and  sends  them  to  form  sects  of  their 
own,  or  leaves  them  outside  of  all  churches.  Let  us  make 
confession  of  a  great  mistake,  and  a  great  fault  on  the  part  of 
the  New  England  churches  of  our  own  order.  The  time  was 
wrhen  these  churches  held  possession  of  almost  the  entire  field. 
These  churches — no  one  will  deny  it — bred  a  stock  of  superior 
men  and  women,  a  company  of  souls  which  would  bear  com- 
parison with  an  equal  number  bred  up  in  any  of  the  historic 
churches  of  Christendom.  But  they  have  lost  the  ground, 
at  least  they  have  lost  that  good  degreee  of  church  unity  and 
conformity  which  then  prevailed,  and  have  seen  almost  all 
the  sects  known  in  Christendom  enter  in  and  contest  the 
field  with  them.  What  is  the  reason?  Partly,  because  they 
set  up  a  standard  which  was  not  broadly  human,  was  too  exact- 
ing on  the  intellectual  side,  too  inflexible  as  regards  other 
sides.  If  religion  always  interested  men  through  conviction 
only,  or  even  mainly,  the  attitude  of  these  churches  was  right 


368  THE  VERY  ELECT 

and  they  would  have  perpetuated  their  ascendency.  But 
religion  makes  its  appeal — and  its  legitimate  appeal — to  some 
men  through  their  emotional  or  their  esthetic  nature,  or  for 
reasons  of  tradition  and  habit,  and  here  there  was  very  meager 
provision  for  meeting  these  real  human  needs.  Other  churches 
came  and  supplied  the  missing  elements  in  the  religious  life, 
and  have  left  us  to  mourn  our  loss  and  to  recognize  too  late 
our  mistake. 

4.  A  fault  on  another  side  which  easily  turns  a  church  into 
a  sect,  and  a  sect  most  alien  to  the  true  Christian  spirit,  is  to 
make  of  the  church  a  social  cult — I  mean  the  church  of  a  set, 
and  especially  of  a  social  set — a  company  called  together  and 
kept  together  by  social  affinities,  by  wealth,  or  position,  or 
style  of  living,  or  taste  in  worldly  matters — a  church  four 
hundred,  so  to  speak.     At  a  service  in  a  certain  city  church, 
the  minister  in  applying  the  doctrine  of  his  sermon  first  ad- 
dressed his  appeal  to  those  who  sat  in  their  own  pews  and  then 
to  those  who  sat  in  the  charity  seats,  saints  or  outcasts  accord- 
ing as  you  pay — an  extreme  but  significant  distinction.     In 
the  early  history  of  the  New  England  churches,  there  was  a 
custom  more  or  less  prevalent  known  as  "dignifying  the  meet- 
ing-house"— an   annual   assignment   of   seats   in   accordance 
with  the  dignity  claimed  by,  or  accorded  to,  the  several  families 
of  the  congregation.     A  better  custom  would  have  been — 
let  us  say,  would  still  be — to  have  read  in  church  periodically, 
the  second  chapter  of  the  general  epistle  of  James,  which  begins 
thus,  "My  brethren,  have  not  the  faith  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Lord  of  glory,  with  respect  of  persons." 

5.  One  other  form  of  the  schismatic  spirit  in  the  church  is 
that  temper  which  induces  men  to  form  little  groups  of  "pecul- 
iar people" — sometimes  in  their  self-satisfied  and  uncharitable 
estimate  of  their  own  piety — a  perversion  of  the  apostle's 
words,  "Beloved,  we  know  that  we  are  of  God  and  that  the 
whole  world  lieth  in  wickedness" — a  very  active  and  very 
noxious  growth  of  spiritual  pride;  sometimes  in  a  very  con- 


TRUE  CHRISTIAN  UNITY  369 

scientious  insistence  upon  some  minor  difference  of  belief  or 
conduct  exaggerated  into  a  totally  abnormal  importance. 
Here  we  strike  the  essential  evil  and  wrong  of  the  divisive  spirit 
whatever  may  be  the  form  which  it  takes:  it  is  a  deficient 
sense  of  the  value  of  the  whole  as  compared  with  the  value  of 
some  particular  part.  The  true  Christian  spirit  says,  "Let 
us  preserve  the  whole,  even  if  we  must  submit  to  some  sac- 
rifice in  this  or  that  part."  The  sectarian  spirit  says,  "Let 
us  insist  upon  having  our  will  here  at  this  particular  spot,  even 
if  we  have  to  give  away  the  integrity  of  the  whole,"  and  so  we 
have  sects  innumerable,  no  one  of  which  contains  or  cherishes 
the  totality  of  the  Christian  truth,  or  of  the  Christian  life, 
because  the  sects  which  have  broken  away  have  carried  with 
them  the  emphasis  on  certain  matters  essential  to  the  complete- 
ness of  the  whole.  Some  low  forms  of  animal  life  have  the 
power  of  reproducing  their  organisms  by  fissure:  two  halves 
become  two  complete  wholes.  But  the  Christian  Church  is 
not  so  organized :  when  it  is  divided  it  is  broken  into  fragments, 
each  maintaining  a  maimed  and  incomplete  individualism, 
so  that  Christendom  has  today  instead  of  churches,  too  many 
groups,  larger  or  smaller,  of  "peculiar  people" — not  peculiar 
in  the  Scripture  sense,  specially  "zealous  of  good  works," 
but  peculiar  in  the  sense  of  having  characteristics  which  have 
not  the  note  of  catholicity,  of  universality,  which  as  Newman 
truly  says  is  one  of  the  essential  notes  of  the  true  Christian 
Church. 

Now  no  one  has  a  right  in  this  way  to  expose  the  weaknesses 
and  arraign  the  errors  of  Christian  churches  without  having 
some  feasible  plan  to  suggest  for  correcting  the  evils  criticised 
and  bringing  in  a  better  state  of  things.  Is  it  to  be  expected 
or  hoped  or  even  desired  that  the  various  churches,  or  as  we 
call  them  denominations,  can  soon,  or  ever,  be  brought  to 
unite  into  one  organization,  or  even  into  few  organizations? 
I  will  confess  that  to  me  that  prospect  seems  well  nigh  hopeless, 
and  for  this  reason,  that  any  such  unifying  would  require  each 


370  THE  VERY  ELECT 

organization  to  give  up  that  for  the  sake  of  which  as  an  organi- 
zation it  exists,  would  be  in  short  to  belie  and  to  cast  reproach 
upon  the  entire  history  and  position  of  the  denominations. 
Can  we  expect  Episcopalians  to  renounce  Episcopal  succession 
in  the  ministry,  and  Baptists  to  forego  adult  baptism  by  im- 
mersion, and  Presbyterians  to  give  up  the  eldership,  for  the 
sake  of  attaining  a  compromising  Christian  unity?  If  it  is 
said  that  this  is  being  done  in  pioneer  communities,  and  in 
rural  villages,  the  answer  is  that  what  men  do  because  they  are 
a  feeble  folk,  and  as  a  last  resort,  they  will  undo  when  they  are 
able. 

Christians  are  slowly  coming  to  see  that  organic  unity,  that 
is,  the  church  as  one  great  organization,  unified,  compacted, 
solidified,  by  rigid  uniformity  of  creed  and  discipline,  is  not 
only  not  the  Christian  ideal  awaiting  some  far  off  realization, 
but  is  not  what  we  hope  for  or  ought  to  strive  for  in  our  en- 
deavors after  Christian  perfection.  Such  rigid  organization 
and  discipline  would  be  possible  among  creatures  of  limited 
and  inferior  capacities  or  among  men  in  a  low  state  of  develop- 
ment, but  among  beings  so  highly  endowed,  so  various  and 
complex  as  men,  it  is  both  impossible  and  undesirable, 
It  is  a  failure  to  realize  the  diversity  of  human  nature  in  one 
humanity  which  has  created  sects  and  which  is  now  seeking 
to  reorganize  them.  What  a  dull  world,  what  a  stupid  life 
ours  would  be,  if  men  were  all  so  alike  that  they  could  be  massed 
and  manoeuvred  and  exploited  in  some  mechanical  or  in  some 
military  fashion.  Men  in  prison  or  under  prison  regime  have 
to  learn  the  lock-step  and  to  get  forward  by  possible  inches. 
Freedom  to  think  and  to  act  upon  one's  own  thinking  is  one  of 
the  prizes  of  Christian  attainment  and  one  of  the  conditions 
of  true  Christian  unity.  Why  should  it  have  ever  been  thought 
necessary  that  men  must  always  think  alike  on  a  subject  in 
which  all  of  us  together  can  think  only  a  small  part  of  possible 
thoughts?  But,  asks  someone,  how  can  men  who  think 
differently  on  the  greatest  of  all  questions,  those  of  religion, 


TRUE  CHRISTIAN  UNITY  371 

live  together  and  work  together  unless  they  agree?  To  that 
question  there  are  two  answers :  first,  that  the  fullest  life  comes 
to  those  who  live  together  and  do  not  agree,  that  is,  those  who 
are  not  just  multiples  of  one  another — those  whose  peculiari- 
ties are  mutually  complementary,  who  contribute  each  to  the 
other's  resources,  who  find  their  differences  helpful;  and 
secondly,  that  when  a  group  of  Christians  separate  from  the 
main  body  in  order  to  emphasize  that  special  truth  which 
they  hold,  they  withdraw  from  the  body  the  value  of  that 
emphasis,  and  by  so  much  make  it  incomplete.  To  take  an 
illustration  from  a  distance  so  as  not  to  be  invidious,  though 
there  are  illustrations  much  nearer  home,  the  English  Wesley- 
ans  in  separating  from  the  mother  church  withdrew  from  it 
the  spirituality  needed,  and  themselves  suffered  the  loss  of 
the  learning  and  the  historic  influence  which  the  Anglican 
church  supplied,  the  result  being  an  aggregate  loss  to  the 
church  at  large. 

What  then  is  the  solution  of  our  question?  the  practical, 
immediate,  feasible  solution  of  it?  The  way  to  answer  any 
such  great  question,  one  concerning  great  movements  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God  on  the  earth,  is  first  to  ask  humbly  and  in  a 
prayerful  spirit,  in  what  way  God's  Spirit,  working  in  and 
through  God's  Providence,  seems  to  be  leading  the  way,  and 
then  to  follow  in  that  way  heartily  and  vigorously.  Can  there 
be  any  mistake  as  to  what  that  way  is  at  the  present  time? 
Is  it  not  in  the  way  of  mutual  respect,  and  sympathy,  and 
fellowship,  and  brotherhood,  and  co-operation?  And  is  not 
the  progress  making  in  these  directions  most  gratifying  and 
heartening? 

In  the  city  of  New  York,  for  example,  there  are  scores  of 
churches  which  a  stranger  could  visit  on  any  Sunday  and  not 
be  able  to  tell  by  anything  said  or  done,  whether  the  church 
was  Presbyterian,  Congregational,  Reformed,  Baptist,  Meth- 
odist, or,  if  we  consider  the  preaching  alone,  Episcopal,  Uni- 
tarian or  Universalist.  The  interchange  of  pulpits  now 


372  THE  VERY  ELECT 

becoming  common,  is  a  further  evidence  of  the  progress  of  this 
spirit.  The  man  today,  minister  or  layman,  who  maintains 
that  the  particular  doctrine  of  his  church  is  not  only  important 
— that  he  may  rightly  do — but  that  it  is  so  essential  that  he  is 
justified  in  refusing  to  all  others  the  name  of  Christian — speak- 
ing of  them  as  "so-called  Christians,"  is  one  of  a  small  minor- 
ity, and  is  likely  to  become  a  lonely  wanderer  in  the  desert, 
crying  with  Elijah  that  he  alone  is  faithful,  and  subjecting 
himself  to  Elijah's  rebuke  of  being  a  traducer  of  his  brethren. 
Let  us  have,  in  the  first  place,  sacramental  fellowship, 
mystical  fellowship,  in  prayer,  in  praise,  in  "  doing  this  in 
remembrance"  of  Christ,  even  if  we  "do  this"  each  in  our  own 
way  which  we  think  was  his  way;  and  in  the  second  place,  let 
us  have  co-operation  in  all  good  works,  to  help  the  poor,  to 
raise  the  fallen,  to  cleanse  corporate  and  civic  life,  to  increase 
sobriety,  to  promote  good  government,  and  in  all  possible  ways 
to  advance  the  Kingdom  of  God  among  men,  at  home  and 
abroad  and  all  round  the  earth,  and  we  need  not  sigh  and  groan 
and  wait  for  the  consolidation  of  belief  into  one  rigid  creed, 
or  for  the  unification  of  churches  into  one  ecclesiastical  organ- 
ization. Christian  unity  will  have  already  come,  because  all 
men  will  be  trying  to  do  God's  will  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in 
Heaven. 


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